


astronaut

by myuzutea



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project, Love Live! Sunshine!!, ラブライブ! 虹ヶ咲学園スクールアイドル同好会 | Love Live! Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Doukoukai (Anime)
Genre: F/F, Outer Space, Science Fiction, protag!ai, protag!kanan, protag!mari, protag!rina
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26990656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myuzutea/pseuds/myuzutea
Summary: 29 girls,1 murder,a big mystery in space.note:– this is an ongoing, work in progress au! the finalised version will be marked as such :]– if you would like to contribute to the development of the storyline, please consider visiting @myuzutea and vote on the story polls!!more details on this project available on @myuzutea (instagram)have a nice day! :)
Relationships: Matsuura Kanan/Ohara Mari, Miyashita Ai/Tennouji Rina
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> *this alternate universe is adapted from among us!*  
> we don't wish to copy the exact game directly; some modifications and adaptations have been made :]

_“what do you want to be when you grow up?”_

_“an astronaut!”_

_“what’s that about?”_

_“they go into space, and they travel to other planets!”_

_“wow, that sounds fun!”_

_“kanan, i promise to take you with me if i ever become an astronaut.”_

_“okay!”_

  
  


* * *

**Year 2398**

Civilisation has come to a crumble. Humans have wiped themselves off their own planet after overloading the environment with fossil fuels and pollutants.

Well, except for a few. There were small communities of humans which survived through the tough conditions. Somehow, some people had constructed a barrier to block out some of the heat and try to reduce some of the devastating effects which had befallen the Earth. However, this was not the end of the problems for the remaining few.

A few years back, a rogue nuclear power plant abandoned by humans exploded.

When it happened, several groups of humans were fragmented. Some escaped underground. Some escaped to the forests. Some ended up in a… kilometre-deep base located at the bottom of the ocean.

Matsuura Kanan and Ohara Mari were thrown out of their dwellings when the explosion happened. It was the middle of the night, and chaos soon erupted across a thirty-kilometre radius of the explosion site.

The shockwave was so powerful that even the strongest buildings, meant to withstand the dystopian, apocalyptic temperatures stemming from mankind’s neglectful treatment of Earth, ended up being decimated. Fortunately, the two of them had survived the explosion as they were shielded by a mountain range a mile away from their dwelling, reducing the impact of the shockwave.

Soon after the explosion, radio broadcasts blaired on the public announcement speakers. “Please seek shelter as soon as possible. Evacuate this area immediately. High doses of radiation will start to leak in an hour. Evacuate this area immediately,” a robotic voice annouced over distant sirens and crackling fire.

Lying on the ground, Kanan opened her eyes, blurry moonlight flooding into her vision. _Wh-where am I? Have I died? Where’s Mari?_

Kanan blinked for a few moments, slowly regaining the sensation of her fingers and legs. Wiggling them through the seething pain, she realised that she was very much alive as she struggled to get up. The gravel path she had been blown out of her house onto was dimly lit. “Mari?” Kanan called out into the darkness, straining her eyes for any sign of her childhood friend.

“K-ka…” a faltering voice responded back from behind. “Mari?” Kanan shouted.

“B-behind you…”

Kanan gatherered all her strength. Picking up a thick branch severed from a tree by the explosion, she pushed it against the ground while trying to lift herself up. Every inch she moved caused a surge of pain up her ankles and her calves, and she flinched. Behind her, she could also hear soft groaning and feet scratching against gravel. “Hold on, Mari,” Kanan started. “I’m coming. Stay there,”

Mustering one final burst of strength, Kanan got up from her kneeling position. She slowly limped towards Mari with the help of the tree branch, and stretched out her hand to help Mari up. “Are you bleeding?” Mari huffed as she struggled up, a piece of debris lodged in her shoulder. “I’m fine… but you don’t seem so, Mari,” Kanan sighed, eyeing the patch of crimson blood seeping through Mari’s shirt.

The two of them made it to a small stream running beside their house after a few minutes. Kanan scooped up some water and ran it over Mari’s wound. “Does it hurt?” Kanan whispered. Mari gently shook her head. “It’s not that pain…”

Once Mari had had her wound cleaned, another announcement started to blair over the public address system. “The ASB has been breached. Take shelter as soon as possible. This is not a drill.” _The ASB?_ Kanan thought. Mari looked at Kanan, as if she knew what Kanan was going to do next. She took Kanan’s hand, with a face full of determination.

They would both now have to rely on each other to survive.

“The ASB… Atmospherical Safety Barrier,” Kanan murmured to herself, taking the biggest steps she could through the ruins of the neighbourhood. She had a compass in her mind already, just like the one that her parents had given her all those years back. “That means… heat is going to start flooding in. They used to call it global warming,” Kanan explained to Mari as they made their way to the fringe of town as fast as their injured bodies could manage.

“Your parents?” Mari asked. Kanan nodded. When she turned 12 and her parents were still around, they had trained her to navigate to emergency shelter locations in the event of an emergency. Using landmarks and a compass, they led Kanan through the same route time upon time again, making sure that she internalised and memorised every step and every turn. After a few weeks of practice, Kanan could start to navigate without a compass at all. However, the image of it was still there. “It was the last thing they had given me before they left…” Kanan trailed off. Mari wanted to ask why and how, but she knew better than to ask questions during a crisis, let alone sensitive questions about Kanan’s past.

Half an hour after the explosion, the duo had made it to the ocean. “Somewhere, around here,” thought Kanan, surveying the vast blue sea for a clue. “Ah, there it is.”

She shifted her foot to the left and tapped it on the ground three times, a spot which aligned right with the miniscule black dot which bobbed on the ocean.

“No one can ever move it, Kanan, It is anchored to the rock floor of the sea. When an emergency happens, follow the compass, come here and tap your foot three times. It has to align with the buoy, or else it won’t work. It will always be here, waiting for you.” Kanan could almost hear her father say.

“We have seven minutes,” Kanan grimly muttered, wading into the ocean with Mari. “It’s about five hundred metres away. Can you do this?”

Mari sternly nodded. “For you, Kanan.”

“Once you activate the black buoy, swim to it as fast as you can. Get there within seven minutes and place both of your thumbs onto the surface.”

Kanan and Mari swam. They literally were swimming for their lives. They swam against the pain, the increasing heat, the sea currents. They were swimming away from fatal radiation and heat that would soon infiltrate the town, no, the country. No, even the entire Earth could be in danger at that point. All it took was one nuclear fallout to tip the Earth over its breaking point.

When they finally got to the black buoy, Kanan hastily placed her thumbs on it. It grew in size, inflating by itself until it became a 5-metre wide balloon. In front of it, a patch could be flipped open for entrance into the buoy. It was marked: “We’re so proud of you, Kanan. You’ve made it. Quick, get in. Mommy and Daddy will always love you. Stay safe out there.”

Kanan and Mari entered, and the ocean was the last they would ever see of the Earth for years.

Inside the descending balloon, Kanan shivered. “They invented this for me just for these kinds of situations. They never lived to see me succeed.”

Mari looked downwards dejectedly. “I’ve always wanted to ask you how they left. If they were the best of the best, the most advanced scientists, how did they…?”

“Once they made me this emergency contraption, they left for outer space. I’m not sure where they are right now.”

Mari placed her hand on Kanan’s. “If it offers some consolation, they may still be alive. They’re true fighters, just like you, Kanan.”

Just then, the balloon had completed its thousand-metre descent to the rock solid ocean floor. It entered a small gap in the rock which closed in when the balloon had fully gone to the other side, and it would be sealed forever.

“You have arrived at your destination,” a voice echoed in the balloon. Mari and Kanan got off, into their new home designated by Kanan’s parents. They were going to live a new life from then on.


	2. the first few days

Beneath a pristine-white counter, Kanan found some seeds that were labelled “Grow in the UV room”. Mari looked at Kanan blankly. “What is... the UV room?”

“I think we should check the manual for that. My parents said there would be one here somewhere…” Kanan trailed off, looking around the spacious chamber. “Where… do we start?” she mumbled.

The two of them spent a few hours figuring out how to operate their new home based on the remnants of information scattered throughout the hideout. They found a manual stuck to the refrigerator. It was labelled **[Mastsuura Laboratories] Apocalypse Rock:** User’s Manual.

“This house is designated for emergency use. It has a maximum capacity of ten people.” Mari read out loud as Kanan went around the shelter to study its facilities.

According to the manual, the hideout did not require any form of power or maintenance. It was capable of deriving power from solar energy (the manual indicated that light rarely could reach a kilometre below the sea, but it would serve as a good emergency backup because you could never know what to expect in a post-apocalyptic world). The hideout also got power from a hydroelectric power station nearby underwater, also embedded deep into the rock to be shielded from any disturbance.

Kanan’s parents had specially designed the hideout to be able to self-repair. After all, the only licensed maintenance workers who would be capable of fixing any issues would be her parents herself, who were possibly already out of the solar system.

After hours of arduous reading, Mari and Kanan came to the conclusion that the UV room was the nursery for their plants to grow in. _How did my parents find out so much? I’ve never known that plants could grow well under ultraviolet light…_ thought Kanan as she meticulously stared at the manual while planting the seeds in the soil available.

12 hours after the both of them had entered their emergency shelter, they had successfully planted a dozen seeds. Mari also started up the water purifier which would pass seawater from the surroundings through reverse osmosis and microscopic filters so that not only would the water be potable, but also the purest in the world. Now, both of them would need to start getting used to living off vegetables for a long time.

* * *

Not all who stayed on the surface were affected by the radiation and following intense heat. A certain few people did, in fact, manage to stay aboveground and unaffected by the radiation fallout, depending on where they took refuge.

Some managed to make use of the things they owned to block out the leaking radiation and soaring temperatures. After all, “you always gotta be prepared in a post-apocalyptic world! Right, Rina?”

With a poker face, Tennouji Rina nodded. “The time for me to bring out the big guns has come!” Miyashita Ai gallantly declared, fixing her protective helmet on just as the radiation leak announcement blared. “Lucky for us, I’ve got these protective suits prepared! Why run to an emergency shelter when we’ve got everything prepared here already?” Ai laughed.

“Yes, thank you, Ai. Long live Queen Miyashita. I owe you my life,” Rina sarcastically muttered.

To give her credit, Miyashita Ai was prepared. She had foreseen such an event happening because of the dire conditions of the environment, and she had, as such, prepared everything needed in such an event. Thousands of cans of food to last decades, multiple sorts of suits… you name it, Ai had it.

“But for now, this radiation suit is all we need if you want to go out. I suggest you lower your body temperature a little and put on this vacuum bag. Why? You should be gaining as least heat as possible now that we are at the sun’s mercy,” Ai concluded, passing Rina a suit from her extensive walk-in wardrobe flooded with suits and more suits.

Rina gasped in awe, seriously meaning it this time. “Wow… you really got everything covered!”

She entered a cryonic freezing machine (that Ai somehow owned as well) and slowly started to cool down to a temperature safe enough for her to stay outside as long as she needed to collect what she needed to collect.

When Rina had finished her treatment, the machine doors opened, causing condensation to pour out of the machine. “I look so cool!” Rina strutted out of the machine, trembling from the freezing cold as she walked. “Now, for the vacuum suit,” Ai said. “Based on the rate of heat gain and the temperature outside right now, I estimate that…” Ai began punching some numbers into her computer. “Give me a jiffy.”

Ai’s computer – no, calling it a supercomputer would be more fitting – ran ten simulations based on database information of the rate an average person at 25° centigrade would gain heat at when exposed to hundreds of degrees of heat.

“And… there we go. You have 40 minutes to stay outside! You said you wanted to gather some crops? Get them quick before the heat and radiation destroy them. This figure is based on your thermal conductivity, which I have measured and stored in the supercomputer,” Ai proudly announced.

“When did you have all this information?” Rina gasped. Ai laughed again. “My supercomputer is linked to sensors all around this house. I– no, the computer knows the air pressure, wind direction, the forecast for tomorrow, next week… ever since I got this computer it has been analysing the weather records of the atmosphere within two miles of our location here at home. The cryotherapy machine is also connected to my computer, and it calculated your thermal conductivity based on your temperature drop and the temperature of the machine, and how long it took you to cool down a degree, and–”

“No thanks,” Rina yawned. “Don’t I need to go off now before it’s too late?”

“Ah, yes. Run along!” Ai handed Rina a heat-resistant helmet and gas mask. “Gas mask first, then the helmet.”

Rina set off for a plantation she knew was nearby. “I’m looking at the computer, okay? I have a third-person and first-person view of you. Don’t worry, I have full access to every single little thing about you. If there’s anything bad, I’ll let you know. Just focus on where you’re going and be careful,” Ai rattled on. “Yes ma’am, you’re making me a bit nervous,” Rina replied. Ai had given a headset to Rina to receive radio signals from the supercomputer, and that allowed Rina to also send back messages to Ai from long distances.

Rina spotted a patch of wheat and harvested it. “I found it. We can make rice with this, right?” Rina said. “Mhm,” Ai nodded. “We’ll make a miniature farm in my home and grow the wheat with the sunlight outside.”

  
  


**The next day**

“Kanan, what’s this?” Mari held up a black box with nothing inscribed onto it. No title, no words, instructions, directions or whatever. “I found it in a cabinet beside the fridge.”

Kanan furiously flipped through the manual. “Give me a bit… ah, this page. This is… a…” Kanan whispered. Mari gasped as she glanced at the manual. “This is a radio signal transceiver.”

“There’s a fingerprint sensor,” Kanan said. “The manual says I can only use my fingerprint to unlock it. My parents literally encrypted everything here using my fingerprint and my DNA.”

Mari passed the box to Kanan. “They took samples of my ten fingers and even did DNA profiling. If anyone managed to make a model of any of my ten fingerprints, they still would not be able to unlock it because their cells’ DNA does not match with mine.”

“Speak now,” an electronic voice spoke from the transceiver upon being unlocked. “What? What do I need to say?” Kanan thought out loud.

Ai’s eyes shot open. _What? Rina?_ She rubbed her eyes sleepily, sitting up. The clock read half-past seven a.m. “What’d you say?”

Ai glanced to her side. Rina was sleeping on the sofa next to the supercomputer. _Sleeping? Did Rina sleeptalk?_

“Did you say something?” Ai gently shook Rina up. “What were you dreaming of? I heard you sleeptalk.”

“Oh, nothing. I was having a good dream about a cat with turquoise eyes and snow-white fur.”

“Then… who was that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you just say ‘What? What do I need to say?’ That wasn’t you?”


	3. dreams

“No, I was sleeping. I was having a nice dream about feeding a cat… why’d you have to wake me up…” Rina yawned, rubbing her eyes.

Ai scratched her head. _What could it be? What could it be… oh, I left my computer on. Was it the radio?_

Just as Ai sat down in front of her supercomputer, another voice crackled through the speakers. “Why don’t we turn it off first and read the manual?” “Sure.”

Rina gasped. “W-who are these people? Are they going to hurt us?” Ai shook her head. “Most probably not… My supercomputer has a tendency to make things scarier than they seem. It’s most likely just some people who are testing their radio transmissions out. I’m trying to locate the source of the frequency now.”

Rapidly typing in something on her keyboard and clicking a few times, Ai drew up a map of the vicinity of their home. “The dot in yellow indicates where we are right now, here,” she pointed at the screen. “And here…” Ai dragged her finger to a red dot in the middle of the sea. “Oh, it appears that the radio signals are coming from somewhere in the sea. And they’re 1 kilometre deep…”

Rina gasped again. “What could anyone be doing in that location?”

“We’ll just have to send them something to find out,” Ai shrugged. “I mean, what could go wrong! This supercomputer is top-notch. I’ll reroute anything we send through multiple cellular towers so it’s difficult to trace the signal back to our location. Plus, the people who we’re trying to reach seem to be… amateurs. No offence, of course! But anything if it helps you feel safe, alright?” Ai ruffled Rina’s soft, pink hair, which bobbed up and down as Rina nodded.

Ai spoke something into the microphone connected to her computer and encoded the signal to be on loop until it was picked up by the exact location she had intended to send it to. “So when they turn on their receiver again, they’ll hear what we said and hopefully will send something back,” Ai explained.

Meanwhile, Kanan and Mari were getting the ropes on operating their transceiver. “Each fingerprint has been encoded to a different function… you can send a text-to-speech message if you would like to mask your voice, morse code, binary, military alphabet or your own voice. Tap once with your left index finger to send a voice message over the radio, and tap twice with the same finger to end the message. Shake the device thrice if you would like to repeat the previous message. Place this transceiver next to a computer if you would like to send a text-to-speech message…”

“Y’know, I think we should just send our voice. So whoever gets our message will know we are human and might feel more comfortable talking to us,” Kanan said. “Of course! I want everyone to be able to hear my shiny voice!” Mari cheered. Kanan smiled. “You’re just as peppy as you were all those years back.”

“I’m so glad I can be here with you, Kanan!”

* * *

Ai sipped a cup of warm tea. “Ah… this warms my heart!”

“Is that tea? I heard that people used to grow tea plants in fields outside hundreds of years ago…” Rina looked over her phone and at the cup Ai was holding.

“Yeah, but it got too hot outside for the tea to grow. Thankfully for my small incubator, we can grow tea plants of our own and continue to drink it.”

Just then, a faint voice crackled from the speaker. “Oh! Someone’s talking!” Ai exclaimed, placing her cup down and running to the supercomputer

“Hello, we would like to acknowledge your message…” Kanan slowly spoke into the transceiver. “To the person who left their transmission on loop, we acknowledge your message.”

“Thank you for replying. Would you mind if we continued talking over an encrypted platform? Please just turn your computer on, I will send you something we can have some privacy on.”

“Of course, and may I know who this is? This is our first time speaking to anyone using radio waves, so…”

“Ai. And you?”

“Kanan, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Got it, I will be sending something over to you real quick. Remember to log on to your computer.”

Ai temporarily disabled her microphone and opened up the map with the location of Kanan and Mari’s transceiver again. “This is the future of technology… previously, humans could only send each other stuff from metres within each other. However, this supercomputer can send messages over kilometres. I knew it was a good decision to invest in such technology knowing that humans would have to be separated in times of these kinds of crises,” Ai went off again, creating a secret online chatroom just for her, Rina and the other people she was going to communicate with. “And there we go, copy, paste, send!”

“Did you see it?” Ai spoke into the microhpone again. “I shared a link with you.”

Kanan and Mari gasped. “Are you all nearby or something? We got it quite quickly. How do you know which compu–” Mari began. “Shh, we can discuss more in private,” Ai whispered.

Once both computers were inside the chatroom, Ai explained everything that she had just done. Kanan and Ai exchanged a few words back and forth. Out of the blue, sentences in capital letters started to appear on the screen.

Kanan> hello it’s me! MARI!

Ai> uhm, who might this be?

Kanan> oh, excuse me! this is my childhood friend mari, and she came to the emergency shelter with me

Ai> oh, i also have someone with me right now, we live together

Kanan> how did you two meet?

Ai> that’s… uh…

Ai turned away from her computer and gazed at Rina. “Do you wanna tell them yourself?”

Rina shook her head. _we can’t say this yet_ , Ai typed.

Kanan> okay, i understand

Ai> thank you!

Ai ended off by wishing Kanan well, and Kanan did the same. Just before Ai ended the conversation, Rina requested to ask Kanan and Mari something.

Ai> wait, my friend beside me would like to say something before we close the chat

Ai> what are your dreams?

Kanan> i’m not very sure, but mari has something she would like to share

Kanan> hello! mari here! i want to be an astronaut :D

Ai> rina wants to be an astronaut as well! but i don’t know how to go to space…

Kanan> surely there must be a rocket somewhere on this planet in case we can’t live here anymore

Ai> technically that time has come, although we are all prepared

Kanan> who knows, maybe sometime in the future we will get to go to space :)

Kanan and Ai logged off soon after their conversation ended.

“Going to space is a wonderful dream,” Ai smiled at Rina, flopping onto the sofa to take a rest. Rina nodded, forlornly gazing out of a window into the sky.  _ The sky can only be blue because of the sun. Why then, is the sun actually this deadly? If we can only live on the earth because of a protective barrier blocking the sun’s true force, we’ve been living a lie. _

“I want to go to space to see the true sun,” Rina whispered. “Hmm? If you do that, you’ll end up burning up before you can even get close to it,” Ai sighed. “It’s sad how the only significant thing in the sky during the day is so deadly.”

* * *

As Rina stared into the sky while Ai dozed off, she suddenly heard more crackles coming from Ai’s supercomputer.  _ Huh? _

Rina sat down in front of the computer, turning the radio volume up.  _ This must be another transmission… _

“Hello? Kanan? Can you hear me?”


	4. second wave

Ai’s eyes shot open. “Is someone trying to contact us through the radio?” Rina nodded. “It doesn’t sound like Kanan or Mari though… it’s definitely someone else. They asked for Kanan.

In their underground base, Kanan and Mari did not hear anything. They had already turned their transceiver off, as opposed to Ai, who left the radio program on her supercomputer on at all times ever since she picked up Kanan’s transmission.

“Someone else with a radio receiver could have picked up our conversation with Kanan,” Ai thought aloud as she typed in some more commands. Suddenly, she paused her fingers. “Actually… Rina, would you like to have a go?”

Rina’s eyes widened. “Me? Typing in the commands?”

Ai nodded. “I’ll show you how!”

In a few clicks, Ai brought up a list of commands on the corner of the screen which indicated the function of some words. “So, the aim here is communicating with the person who sent that message. To do that, firstly encrypt the location of the message source. Then, we have to activate the transmitter. Then we can speak to the person we are trying to converse with.”

After about a minute, Rina had figured out what she needed to type. The radio signal transmitter popped up on the screen and the supercomputer was ready to deliver the message. “Would you like to speak?” Ai asked Rina, who shook her head. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Hello, I’m not Kanan but we can feel free to talk if you’d like,” Ai said, hitting the enter key on the keyboard. “Now we wait for a response.”

A reply from the mystery person did not take long. “Oh, might you be Ai? I picked up your voice just now.”

“Along with Kanan’s?” Ai said.

“Yeah, from my radio transceiver. Anyways, I would be happy to converse with you as well!”

“We can have a three-way conversation if you’d like. I just need to hook up Kanan, give me a second.”

“Sure!”

_ Chat: Ai, Kanan _

Ai> someone wants to talk to you kanan

Kanan> who is it?

Ai> im not sure,, but i think they overheard us talking on the radio before we started chatting online. they seem quite nice ^^

Kanan> okay, let’s add them to this chatroom

Ai> i’ll give them the link

Using the advanced file-sharing system on her supercomputer yet again, Ai sent the chatroom link to the mystery person’s computer.

Eli> hello!

Kanan> hello! i heard you wanted to speak to me.

Eli> yes! we heard your conversation with ai. we two are thinking of starting up a post-apocalyptic community where survivors of the event can communicate with each other and share resources if needed! since the event only happened a few days ago, we definitely will need to unite and come together for the long haul :)

Ai> you two?

Eli> yeah, we live together! i am eli and the person next to me is nozomi :)

Ai> cool! i like the idea of having an internet community :D i have tons of things to share with people who might need it!

Eli> great! would you mind if this becomes the official group chat for the community?

Ai> that’s fine by me :D

Kanan> same here!

Kanan> oh yeah, i also am living with someone! she would like to introduce herself.

Kanan> hey! i’m mari, and i’m childhood friends with kanan :)

Ai> i also live with someone, but she’s a bit shy so we won’t be talking about her for now

Eli> it’s alright, we are more than happy to have a small community here already :)

Closing the laptop, Kanan heaved a deep sigh. “Y’know, being in an apocalypse isn’t all that bad when you have people around.”

“I’m so glad I have you around, Kanan,” Mari smiled, wrapping her hands around Kanan’s arm, causing the latter to blush. Kanan nodded. “I also feel the same way.”

“Well, we’ll have to spend the rest of our lives down here, as it seems now,” Mari thought. “I can’t imagine going through this apocalypse alone.”

Kanan laid her head on Mari’s shoulder, and she slowly dozed off. However, just before her eyelids fully shut, Kanan mumbled something under her breath softly.

“To be honest…” she started, half-asleep. “Mari… I think I…”

Mari felt her heart beating faster.  _ Wh-what’s happening? _

“I think… I think I have… feel… feelings for… y–”

Before Kanan could complete her sentence, she completely dozed off. Mari softly chuckled at the sight, and she laid back onto the sofa to rest as well.

Not long afterwards, Kanan’s ears felt like they had picked something up. Through the background noise of the whirring machines in Apocalypse Rock, Kanan felt something sharp yet distant pierce through the calmness of the atmosphere. There was a growing, developing disruption in the distance. She slowly opened her eyes, trying to figure out what the sound was. It was pulsating and dreadful… like a siren.

“Mari… Mari! Do you hear that?” Kanan whispered, gently tapping Mari’s hand to wake her from her afternoon slumber. “H-huh?” Mari confusedly looked around. “No… listen carefully. Do you pick up a siren?” Kanan said.

Mari tried to ascertain something over the ambient churring of the electricity generator and water purifier. “Hmm… kind of. I think something’s going on up there.”

Kanan briskly set her laptop down onto the coffee table and opened it up, entering the chatroom.

_ Chat: Ai, Eli, Kanan _

Kanan> i hear something like a siren right now. is everything okay?

Ai> no. i felt a slight vibration across the house. 

Eli> i think something exploded again. i can see a fireball in the sky.

Kanan> … what exploded?

Eli> we’re not sure yet but we think it is an abandoned ammunition warehouse.

Ai> why would an ammunition warehouse suddenly explode?

Eli> we have to check the area around the warehouse to figure out what’s going on. it doesn’t seem likely that this was done by hand, though

Ai> give me a sec, i’m retrieving satellite data…

Kanan> stay safe, everyone

  
Ai furiously clicked here and there, left and right on the screen, trying to find something that would be of use.  _ Let’s go to the first day after the meltdown. What do we have? Soaring temperatures, harmful doses of radiation outside… _

“Oh, look at that,” Ai pointed towards the forest surrounding the suspected culprit, an ammunition warehouse. “Some of the trees are charred. Some are burning.” Rina’s eyes widened in shock.

Ai> can everyone see the attachment?

Kanan> yep, the photo shows some trees burning, what about it?

Ai> i think that a wildfire caused by the rising temperature after the nuclear meltdown ended up spreading to the warehouse, causing it to explode

Eli> yeah, that would make sense

Kanan> is everyone okay up there?

Eli> we’re not sure. nozomi and i are going to set off soon to look for people who might be injured in this event.

Ai> hit me up if you need protective gear, food, medical supplies, or anything

Eli> sure :) thank you!

Yet another disaster had befallen the small, sleepy town by the sea that Kanan and Mari were living under. Frowning, Kanan went to get a glass of cold water to calm her nerves.

“Do you think there will be another disaster after this one?” Kanan sighed.

“I hope not…” Mari trailed off. “But I feel like there will be another one, regardless of how much we hope it won’t happen.”

“When I was young, my parents told me all about the kinds of terrible things that would happen if humans kept burning things and overusing electricity. They said that the icebergs at the tips of the earth would start to melt and cause the sea level to rise. Coastal cities like the one we used to live in would be flooded. It’s really scary to think about…”

“If such a thing happens, we’ll have nowhere left to go. Perhaps, this is the beginning of the end, not for us, but for the human race as a whole.”

“Yeah, even if we survive down here, everyone up there…”

“I trust that Ai, Rina, Nozomi and Eli know what to do. In fact, Ai is the most prepared, She has everything we and other people could ever need. We can get through this, okay?”

* * *

**A few hours later**

Eli> our house is now a triage. several people are burnt. food is doing okay. we just need more bandages, alcohol swabs and cream. four casualties, one dead.

Ai> got it. we’re coming over.

Kanan and Mari could only watch the intensifying situation unfold from their computer screen. Despite being in a safe position, they felt so helpless. Helplessly unable to provide any assistance for the people aboveground.

“There must be some way out of here,” Kanan said, flipping through the inch-thick manual. “Some way…”

Ai rushed out of her house on foot after she entered the cryonic freezing machine and donned her protective suits, doing the same for Rina. She trailed behind Ai, arms full of a box with the medical supplies Eli requested. “Wait for me!” she cried.

“We can see your location. We’ll give you the directions. Turn left at the next fork in the road,” Eli spoke into the microphone, her voice echoing into Ai and Rina’s headsets.

“Some way to help them…” Kanan kept flipping.

“Keep right and then take the underpass. The code to the door is 221210.”

“Relax, Kanan. Emotional support also counts, you know?”

“The first door is storage. The second door is the toilet. Open the third door.”

“No! We have to find a way to do more… it’s unfair that we’re just stuck down here in a safe shelter while everyone above is panicking.”

“Look at me, Kanan.”

The door creaked open. A girl with dark purple hair sat in front of a monitor. Her hair was tied into two long, neat ponytails with scrunchies. “Hello, you’re Ai and Rina?” she said with a smile. The pair nodded.

“Kanan!” Mari shouted, grabbing her flustered face and turning it to face her. In shock, Kanan dropped the manual out of her hands, and it tumbled onto the floor.

“I love you.” With that, Mari pressed her lips into Kanan’s, softly kissing her.

“Nice to meet you! I’m Nozomi.”


	5. burning up

While Nozomi prepared food for the injured, Eli had set off on a rescue mission of her own.

Eli> do you have a satellite image of the site right now? give me the blast radius so i know how much space i need to cover

Ai> a second…

Ai> okay, so it seems that the explosion was kinda bad. the warehouse is in shambles. all the trees within a few hundred metres of the explosion are badly charred or have been reduced to soot. there is a residential areas… i suggest you go north. people living on the west side are relatively far from the explosion so check on them later. the north area is the key.

Eli> got it.

With a cart full of first aid kits, water and bandages of all sizes and shapes, Eli dashed out of her underground dwelling and rushed towards the forest, Nozomi reading out directions through her headset.

Under a monotone sky, sirens blared in the distance yet again, just like during the first catastrophe. “An explosion has occurred in the middle of the forest. Please evacuate the forest and take shelter as soon as possible.” Eli could feel her hand hurting as she lugged her rescue supplies across the rough terrain into the forest, trying her best not to slip and fall.

Although the journey only took fifteen minutes, it felt like an eternity to Eli, who was trying her best to navigate across the rough terrain. By the time she had reached the small residential community, the flames had spread to half of the houses. The fire department had not reached yet.

“Nozomi, I might need more reinforcements. The fire is moving fast. Please call the fire department while I try to investigate the unburned houses.” Eli murmured as she advanced through the searing heat and the thickening smoke, trying to discern if there was anyone around.  _ But surely, if anyone is around then they would have died from the radiation and the raw heat from the sun already… _

Confirming that there was no one outside, Eli started heading towards the residential units to check on its inhabitants and to evacuate anyone who could have been possibly unaware of the second incident. “Hello? Is anyone in?” Eli shouted, pounding on the doors to each of the houses. “Hello? Please open the door if you hear this!”

Most of the houses seemed to be empty, and just to double confirm that no one was in, Eli peered into the windows.

Just as Eli was about to turn away from one of the houses, Eli heard something coming from behind her. An outstretched hand was knocking on one of the windows.

Eli peered as much as she could into the floor of the house. All she could identify from the person was that she had black hair. However, she was leaning too close to the wall for Eli to observe any other details.

“Thankfully… I made sure to… bring this crowbar!” Eli groaned as she dug the heavy tool out of her supply cart, working on unlocking the front door. “Nozomi! Come to my location with a wheelchair a soon as possible. 1 survivor. I’m not sure if her injuries are life-threatening, so please do a detailed check after I provided first-aid,” she spoke into her headset. “Got it,” Nozomi determinedly replied.

As soon as she broke into the black-haired girl’s house, Eli slammed the door shut to block out anything harmful from seeping into the house. She then went back to her cart and hauled it inside of the house. “Hey, are you ok?” she immediately asked the red-eyed girl, setting down her supplies on the floor in front. “My legs have been either broken or sprained… I’m not really sure. But I bruised my arm as well when the explosion threw me out of my chair.”

Taking note of the injuries the girl had sustained, Eli picked whatever she needed up and immediately administered first aid to the girl. “Does it hurt?” Eli caringly asked as she gently applied some cream onto the bruise. The girl slightly shook her head. “It’s fine, I can take a small hit. By the way, what’s your name?”

“Eli, you?”   
  
“Heh… that’s a mystery for now…”

Once Eli finished her operation, she packed everything back into her cart and tossed the girl a special suit that she would be able to go out in. “Here, wear this. You’ll die out there without it. You can walk, right?” The girl nodded, donning the suit. Both of them headed towards the door to evacuate before the fire swallowed any path out of the forest they could take. Just then, the black-haired girl ran towards a table, grabbing a small, crimson notebook. “Can I leave this in your box? I don’t want it burning up,” she said.

“Well, good thing this box is heatproof!” Eli mused, unlocking her cart and placing the girl’s book inside. “What’s in here?”

“Oh, nothing much…” the black-haired girl looked away, slightly blushing. “Anyway, let’s go! I’ll follow you.”

Nozomi took the soup she had made off the stove and rushed out of the underground bunker, bringing what Eli had requested. “Could you set up a small triage beside the forest where the fire hasn’t spread to? It’d be easier for you to run from the incident site to outside the forest than run all the way home every time we found a casualty,” Nozomi said.

“But… I can’t really check their wounds if we’re out in the open atmosphere. Removing their suits to do a further check would expose them to the high temperature.”

“Hm… you have a good point. Would you mind running back and forth the bunker though?”

“From what you said, it doesn’t sound too bad. We can escort everyone back to the bunker after we take them far away enough from the fire first. So I’ll leave them to wait at the triage outside the forest until we find as many survivors as we can. Then we can bring them back.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

In a few minutes, Nozomi had arrived. She dug a few poles into the ground, throwing a heatproof sheet over them and setting some wheelchairs down. She also set down the supplies which Ai and Rina had promptly delivered to their bunker earlier. Eli had also reached the area with the black-haired girl, leading her to the wheelchair. “Hey, I’ll stay here with you for a while. While my partner finds other people who are alive I’ll stay with you here. Don’t worry, alright?” Nozomi helped the black-haired girl down onto the wheelchair. “It’s not like I needed your help or anything, but t-thank you…” the girl replied, pouting.

Eli ran off into the forest again as the fire continued to ravage the residential areas. “I’m counting on you, Nozomi!” she shouted as she disappeared into a thick row of trees.

_༄_

_ Not… again? _

A firefighter bolted upwards, sprinting to the pole as the sudden fire bell rudely woke her up from her short snooze. “Attention. There has been an explosion near the north section of the forest. Level three alert. Please report.”

In the sleepy seaside town – now shaken by the second wave of disaster – there was only one fire unit due to the town’s small land area and population. It was comprised of three people, and incidents as major as the nuclear meltdown and ammunitions explosion were far and few between. Furthermore, not many people were up for the challenge of putting out fires in a high-stakes environment in which merely going out would pose a risk.

“What happened? What’s g-going on?” Another firefighter mumbled, running to the firetruck.

Every second that passed was crucial. “Put on the suit in fifteen seconds. Reach the fire truck in ten. Get out of the station in one-minute maximum.”

“...Is everyone here?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The unit had finished assembling and was ready to go. They raced out of the fire station as soon as they could, red firetruck barrelling down the street. The scene of the accident was around seven kilometres away, meaning that it would be an approximately ten-minute drive.

The fire truck screeched to a halt. “Hanayo, take the hose. Rin, connect the hose to the hydrant!” Maki, the unit leader ordered. The two unit members nodded, jumping out of the fire truck and into the scene of the fire that they had just reached. 

Maki squinted her eyes, observing the scene for the source of the fire. “It’s all one big blaze… I don’t even know where to start,” she sighed, picking up another hose and joining the fight against the flames.

While Rin, Maki and Hanayo were fighting the fire, Eli was also plunged deep into the scene of the disaster, trying to find someone other than the mysterious black-haired girl.

“P-please help me!” a soft, timid voice nearly lost in the overwhelming crackling of the scene was caught by Eli’s ears. Eli turned around, realising that there was someone at the window. Eli professionally picked up her cart, signalling for the girl inside the house to unlock the door.

After going to a few more houses, Eli had slowly but surely rounded up as many survivors as she could find. In fact, she had checked all the houses that were spared by the ruthless fire, and it could therefore be safe to say that she had found all the survivors. The fire unit was also trying their utmost best, trying out different ways to fight the fire. “Rin, could you go over there for a sec? I think you’ll put out more of the flames from there,” Hanayo shouted.

By the time the flames had died down, Eli had rounded up four survivors in total. The sun was slowly making its way out from the fringes of the sky, and Eli and Nozomi packed up the triage tent, preparing to bring the survivors back to their bunker. Just then, they heard some people behind them. “Hey!”

Eli, Nozomi and the rest of the party turned around at the voice. The unit firefighters were standing exhaustedly, panting. “We just… managed to put the fire out.” Hanayo sighed.

“Is everyone okay?” Rin asked. “I mean, it is part of our responsibility to check on everyone.”

“You three are heroes. Why not rest around here for the night?” Eli suggested. “We owe you a lot,” Nozomi smiled, tiredly. “We’ve been trying to find as many survivors as we could around here! We’re starting up a post-apocalyptic community to stay connected during this crisis.”

“That’s cool, but may I ask who are the people with you?” Maki chimed in to the conversation. “The blonde girl – Eli, right?” the black-haired girl started, to which Eli nodded. “She went around saving us. She… she was really nice.”

“Nice to meet you, Eli!” Maki stepped forward, shaking Eli’s hand. “You really helped us out a lot today. My partners were kinda worried that we couldn’t find anyone in the houses that were spared from the inferno, but it turns out they were all here!”

“Yes, thank you so much, Eli, and…” Rin turned towards the girl beside Eli. “Nozomi! Thank you so much for your help today,” she introduced herself.

“Right,” Maki nodded. “So, how are you doing?” She directed her gaze towards the black-haired girl who spoke earlier.

“I-I…” The black-haired girl stuttered. Upon making eye contact with Maki, her eyes darted away and there was an obvious blush on her face. “I’m alright,” she smiled. Maki relievedly nodded. However, in the next moment, her eyes widened in shock and disbelief.  _ Hold on… she looks kind of familiar. _

“How about the rest of you?” Hanayo said. “All good? Do we need any serious medical operations? We can take anyone to the hospital if they need it. The other survivors shook their heads. “We’ve already given them a preliminary round of medical care. We’ll examine them closer in the bunker later, and if we need to we’ll ask for more supplies,” Eli said.

“Okay, that’s good. We’ll be heading back now, I guess,” Maki sighed, tired from the day’s events. “Thanks for all the help!”

“Actually, you all can rest here for tonight and clean yourselves up. We have clothes, a shower and some food! It’s the least we can do to express our gratitude,” Nozomi thought.

“No, it’s alright! We’d not want to trouble you all after everything you all have just gone through.”

“It’s fine! Our bunker can support up to a hundred people. This isn’t any biggie!” Eli reassured, stretching out her hand as an invitation to the three firefighters. After a few seconds, they finally relented, thanking Eli and Nozomi for their generosity.

The walk back to the bunker was quite silent, as none of the girls had any ideas of what to do after a life-or-death situation. Their future was also uncertain. Would they be able to move back into their own homes? Would they need to stay in a depressing, dark underground chamber for the rest of their lives? The only thing that could be heard was the sound of footsteps on soil and the droning sound of Nozomi pushing the black-haired girl in the wheelchair. Every step they took was full of simultaneous hope and uncertainty; relief and anxiety.

_ Nico? Is it really you? _


	6. lingering feelings

“I love you… from the bottom of my heart,” the black-haired girl mumbled as she scribbled into her crimson notebook. The other girl beside her felt like she could get lost in those glossy, deep eyes. She smiled happily as she eyed the notebook.

Yazawa Nico and Nishikino Maki were in love. They were inseparable, and despite living separately, they would often visit each others’ houses and stay for days on end. They almost had a perfect relationship, until…

“I’m not very sure, Maki. I wouldn’t want to rush into anything…”

“Rush into anything? We’ve been dating for months.”

“I just feel like I need more time to think everything through.”

“Y’know, I feel like I’ve wasted my time with you.”

“B-but why? I just feel scared to say yes to anything so quick. Of course, I love you, and you love me. So you haven’t wasted any time.”

“I’m not so sure if I still love you.”

When Maki brought the idea of marriage up, Nico was a little apprehensive. She did not feel like saying yes to a lifelong commitment, at least not until they had dated for a year, or even two years. Alas, Maki, the passionate young girl in love, could not understand. “I… I just wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. But you don’t want to, so I’m going to go now.”

“Maki, wait!”

“It’s over. Our relationship is over.”

“Don’t say that…”

“Since you don’t want a future with me in it, why should I stay?”

As the door to her house slammed shut, the pages of Nico’s crimson diary bloomed with teardrops. She was alone again. Lonely, lonely, lonely, the walls of her house screamt. The silence of the air screamt. The fleeting scent of Maki that always hung around screamt. The pages of her open crimson notebook screamt to be filled with more memories that Nico and Maki could have made together, but would not be able to any longer. The silence of the house which followed Maki’s sudden departure was only broken by almost-inaudible, muffled sobbing and sniffling.

༄

“Kanan!” Mari shouted, grabbing her flustered face and turning it to face her. In shock, Kanan dropped the manual out of her hands, and it tumbled onto the floor.

“I love you.” With that, Mari pressed her lips into Kanan’s, softly kissing her.

Caught by shock, Kanan’s eyes widened and froze. The two of them stayed frozen on the sofa for a minute, Mari slowly savouring the feeling of Kanan’s soft, plump lips against hers, Kanan struck with surprise which soon melted into bliss.

“Kanan,” Mari whispered. “Even if you can’t do anything for the people outside, you mean everything to me.”

Kanan sighed. “I…”

“I just wanted to make my parents proud.”

“I’m sure that your parents are more than happy that you have made a difference in my life as a big part of it. You shared their wonderful invention with me… this underwater blastproof shelter.”

“Well, you have a point…”

“You’re doing amazing, Kanan. Even by giving emotional support in the online community. I’m sure Rina, Ai and anyone else who enters the community will be at ease with your presence.”

“You’re right…”

“You’re the best, Kanan.”

“...I love you too.”

Kanan leaned into Mari and softly kissed her, this time fully relishing the moment. The two of them stayed like that for a while, neither of them wanting to let go.

“Hey, why don’t we check on what’s going out up there?” Kanan suggested after a few moments of silence.  
Mari flipped the laptop open yet again.

  
Chat: Ai, Eli, Kanan

Kanan> what’s happening up there?

Eli> ai and rina have just arrived at our bunker with medical supplies

Eli> oh yeah, by the way this is nozomi

Kanan> okay…

  
Just then, Nozomi received a transmission from Eli, who was out on the frontlines trying to save as many people as she could. “Nozomi, I might need more reinforcements. The fire is moving fast. Please call the fire department while I try to investigate the unburned houses.”

Eli> oh, i’ve just gotten something from eli. she radioed me telling me that she needs me to be out there.

Eli> talk to you all soon! ^^

Kanan> please stay safe and be careful!!

“Be careful!” wished Ai and Rina too as Nozomi dashed out of the bunker, on her way to rendevous with Eli. “Thanks!” Nozomi cried out as she disappeared up the flight of stairs leading to the bunker’s entrance.

Tiredly sighing, Rina leaned against the wall of the bunker’s main room, looking at a live feed of the disaster site on Nozomi’s computer. “I wonder if they’re gonna be alright… Nozomi and Eli.”

༄

Before the explosion occurred, all Nico could do was mindlessly pace around her house, thinking of Maki, who she had confessed her love to three years ago. Since then, she never really saw Maki again. She knew that they lived in the same neighbourhood, but they never ran into each other.

_I wonder if Maki even remembers our three year anniversary._

Out of the blue, a bright light rushing out of the forest flooded into Nico’s window behind her. Before Nico could turn around to figure out what had happened, an immense shockwave swept the entire house, causing it to shake. Nico was thrown to the front of her living room violently, bruising her arm and hitting her leg.

After the initial shock of the explosion vanished, Nico opened her eyes that she had closed shut on instinct when the shockwave hit her. “Wh-what’s going on?” She fumbled, trying to get up. However, her hurt leg had prevented her from going anywhere, and all she could do was lie against the wall that she had been thrown against.

_I wonder if Maki’s alright._

Many thoughts churned around Nico’s mind as if it was a blender. No matter how she tried to stop herself, she could not restrain her mind from wandering to Maki’s situation. She knew that Maki lived in the same neighbourhood. Even if she had fallen out of contact with Maki, she knew that Maki was not the type of person to move to another town just to avoid her. Furthermore, house prices had skyrocketed since they needed to be adapted to fit the catastrophic conditions of the atmosphere, making moving house virtually impossible.

Soon, a plume of smoke started to rise from the forest, and Nico watched in horror as the flames started to creep up the parched trees and slowly but surely crawl to her house. _Please… someone please rescue me soon. I want to see Maki again, even if it’s ten years, twenty years, however long into the future…_

Just then, Nico heard knocking coming from the window attached to the wall she was thrown against. She tried to look upwards, but she was so close to the wall and lying so low to the ground that she could only see a few strokes of blond yellow hair peeking out. Stretching out her hand, she signalled for help.

Eli pried the door open, bursting into Nico’s house and giving her first aid. Heaving a sigh of relief, Nico and Eli evacuated the house before the fire could reach them. To be honest, Nico considered leaving the crimson book in her house to burn with everything else under the merciless tongues of flames that were soon to engulf everything. However, she took the crimson book with her at the last minute. No matter how long I have to wait… I’ll wait for you, Maki.

༄

Hours flew by as Ai and Rina talked to Kanan and Mari using Nozomi’s computer. Just then, the front door of the bunker flew open. The exhausted firefighters streamed in first, followed by the survivors of the explosion and its resulting fire. Nozomi and Eli went in last, shutting the door behind them.

“Make yourself at home, everyone!” Eli declared. “I’ll show you all around a bit.”

Everyone unanimously agreed to let Rin, Hanayo and Maki use the showers first. As they passed by the main room with Ai and Rina inside, all they could muster was a tired wave, to which Ai and Rina awkwardly waved back.

The entire time, Nico was wondering if Maki remembered her. There was no doubt about it: Maki’s face was familiar to Nico, and Maki also looked like she recognised Nico. She wondered how awkward it would be for both of them, finding each other through a crisis after losing contact for so long.

༄

When everyone had finished settling into the living quarters, Nico slowly stumbled out of her room to drink the soup that Nozomi had prepared earlier for everyone. The only other person in the pantry was… Maki.

When Maki noticed Nico coming into the pantry, she looked up from her soup.

“Nico? You’re… ok?”

Nico wanted to say something, but nothing came out of her mouth. She could only stand at the corner of the pantry, not moving, not saying anything. Maki also stared into blank space for a while, before returning to her food.

“Why did you leave?” The words softly trickled out of Nico’s mouth.

Maki looked up, unable to catch what Nico had said. “Why… did you leave?” Nico repeated, raising her voice a bit.

To this, Maki could not say anything, and guilt was written all over her face. As Nico felt warm tears well up in her eyes, she ran out of the pantry and went to her room.

༄

_Eli has updated the group chat description._

undersea hideout – kanan, mari

underground bunker –  
nozomi, eli  
rina, ai (delivered supplies)  
maki, rin, hanayo (firefighters)  
nico, kotori, honoka, umi (2nd explosion survivors)

Eli> hi everyone! good morning!

Eli> i’ve just updated the group chat information! based on yesterday’s incident i think it’s important that we keep records of everyone’s locations so that we can stay together when the next crisis occurs!

  
From the two messages that Eli had sent the first thing when she woke up the next morning, Kanan and Mari’s computer buzzed to notify them. The two of them had fallen asleep messily on the sofa after Mari comforted Kanan the previous night, and were both promptly awakened by the buzzing sounds of the computer.

“That sounds great,” Mari said as she typed out her reply to Eli.

Mari> that sounds great! is everyone okay over there?

Eli> yep!

Eli> there are three people up now, i’ll get them to come over

  
Eli pushed her chair away from the desk and went to the pantry to get Nozomi, Ai and Rina over.

Eli> hi there, this is ai

Kanan> hello! how’s everything?

Eli> yesterday was a really long day, so i couldn’t really fall asleep

Kanan> you didn’t sleep from yesterday till this morning?

Eli> it was more of a toss and turn around the bed kind of thing, i drifted in and out of sleep until fifteen minutes ago when i got up

Kanan> wow… you alright?

Eli> i think so ^^

Eli> however, the other people in this bunker are currently sleeping right now. i mean, i can understand considering the ordeal they went through…

Eli> they’re all in the description! eli, nozomi, rina and ai got to know them a little last night.

Kanan> THAT’S REALLY COOL!

Eli> this must be mari, huh

Kanan> HOW’D YOU KNOW? :o

Eli> usually mari’s the one talking in all caps…

Kanan> HAHA! you’ve discovered my secret!

Eli> we know you too well

…  
…  
…

Eli> oh wait! someone came out of their room!

Eli> give me a sec…

  
Ai peered back from the chair and glanced towards the door. She saw a red-haired girl stroll into the room. “Oh, Maki! Good morning!”

“Hello, what’s up?” Maki replied, groggily rubbing her eyes. “Who’s on the computer?”

“Some people we managed to contact through radio transmissions!”

“May I talk to them?”

“Of course!”

  
Eli> hello, it’s maki

Kanan> hi, this is kanan

Kanan> i am living with someone else, mari

Eli> that’s really cool… uh, the description says you’re living in an undersea hideout?

Kanan> yeah, it’s 1 kilometre beneath the sea!

Eli> that’s amazing, did you make it yourselves or…

Kanan> uhm, that’s… a secret for now!

Eli> aww, nevermind then! for now i just want everyone to stay safe

Eli> the explosion did not affect you all in any way so far, right?

Kanan> no, we’re beneath solid rock so no explosion that far away won’t even scratch it

Kanan> we’ll be giving our emotional support from down here though! even if we can’t exit where we are right now we’ll remain in contact through this chat! this community!

Eli> community… 

Eli> that reminds me, nozomi said something about a community last night. a post-apocalyptic community?

Kanan> ah, of course! technically you are already in, seeing you are communicating with us through this group chat right now :D

Eli> we can still join using the office computer at the fire station!

Kanan> fire station?

Eli> hanayo, rin and i work as firefighters! eli and nozomi let us rest here for now since the events yesterday have been quite overwhelming

Eli> i know we’re already using nozomi’s computer to communicate, but since we are officially supposed to be at the fire station, could you help to add us into the chatroom on that computer as well?

Kanan> sure, just turn it on when you get back!

  
Maki chatted for a bit more with the others before returning to the pantry to eat some breakfast. On the other hand, Nico was still huddled up under the covers of the bed in her room, thinking about everything that had happened.

_I was rescued from my house, and then I came here, and then I saw her again…_

_How is this possible? How?_

Her wandering mind was a mess, and she struggled to face the fact that the person who violently ripped herself out of Nico’s life was now coming back. In fact, she even talked to Nico. There were so many words to describe her state of mind at that time: confused, frustrated, sad, helpless… the list went on and on.

At that moment realisation had struck Nico, and she replayed the moment of her fetching the crimson notebook from the table in her house. Was she clinging on to a past that would never return, to a person who she would never feel the same way for again? Or did she do it because her subconscious mind still had something to say to Maki, some unfinished business? Perhaps, there was still something more between the two of them that could blossom…?

As of last night, Nozomi and Eli had recruited the survivors and the firefighters to join the post-apocalyptic community. Nico turned her phone on and went to the group information. From there, she saved Maki’s number into her contacts and bravely messaged Maki what was on her mind.

_maki, i’m not over it yet so i’d love more time to get over everything that happened. i definitely want to be in love with you someday, but now is not that time._

_but this crimson book proves i haven’t fully erased you._

Nico snapped a photo of the words she had written in that book three years ago. “I love you… from the bottom of my heart.”

  
_i had every chance to throw it away and forget about it, and even yesterday i could have left it to burn with my house._

_but i chose not to_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really hope i didn't go too much into the details of nico and maki's backstory HAHA i just wanted to give their relationship some depth and hopefully resolve whatever problems they have by the end of the story to tie it up nicely :]
> 
> hope you liked this chapter! thank you for the support <3


	7. plan a

As the skyrocketing temperatures soared high and seared wide, the after-effects of the nuclear meltdown were on a global scale. Soon, pictures of coastal areas flooded by rapidly rising sea levels popped up one after another on the mass media. Online maps were started to show which areas were flooded the most, and scientists were trying their best to estimate how much time there was left for people living on the coastal cities to evacuate, and more importantly, where they could evacuate to.

The planet was left in a scramble to higher ground, and mass hysteria had driven many away from their coastal hometowns. For Kanan and Mari’s hometown, the chaos was not as severe as in other locations. However, the sea was still certainly and visibly encroaching on the scorched land.

  
  


_ A few days after the second explosion _

When news of the rising sea level reached the Post-Apocalyptic Online Community, Rina and Ai scrambled out of the underground bunker, leaving Nozomi, Eli, the survivors and the firefighters there.

Gobbling up the last of her food, Maki went to wash her plate and rest for a while more before returning to the fire station. Just then, she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.

“Huh? Nico?” she gasped, reading the message.

**_༄_ **

_ Eli has updated the group chat description. _

_ undersea hideout _ – kanan, mari

_ underground bunker _ –

nozomi, eli

rina, ai (delivered supplies)

nico, kotori, honoka, umi (2nd explosion survivors)

_ fire station –  _ maki, rin, hanayo (firefighters)

Frankly, the firefighters did not have much to do at the fire station owing to the small land area of their sleepy, quiet seaside town. Plus, the rate of fire accidents had drastically decreased with advances in technology. Stoves became electric, all houses had low fuse ratings and advancements in technology had automated everything so that no fire would have a chance to get too large. Many household objects also became fireproof.

Of course, none of these safety measures could stop the forest from catching on fire. However, that would be an isolated incident for the firefighters, and they would be able to return to a lifestyle of lounging in the fire station due to the lack of emergencies they had to attend to. Apart from doing nothing, they only had to inspect their equipment once every two weeks, leaving a lot of time free.

Maki logged on to the computer in the fire station, and Ai sent the link to the Post-Apocalyptic Online Community out once again.

  
  


_ Chat: Ai, Eli, Kanan, Maki _

Maki> hello from the fire station

Ai> hello!

Ai> i’m currently monitoring the sea situation

Kanan> sea situation? that’s a mouthful

Kanan> more like sea-tuation! HAHAHA!

Eli> mari again, right?

Kanan> of course!! ^^

Maki> so anyway, what’s happening at the sea?

Ai> since this is a new situation… i only have three days worth of data. the sea level has risen around 10 centimetres a day, so judging the structure and steepness of the land, i would expect the sea to reach 1 kilometre inland in… two to three weeks?

Kanan> 1 kilometre??

Eli> who would be affected?

Ai> just a small group of residents. i think we should inform them of what is happening so they can start preparing for an evacuation today

Eli> that sounds like a great idea. when they’re ready to move out, i’ll help escort them to the bunker!

Maki> i was just wondering if the bunker is underground, then wouldn’t the rising sea level be able to seep into the bunker? since it’s below ground

Eli> don’t worry! around the front door, there is a drainage system that can direct water away. plus, we are already on elevated ground.

Eli> ai, why don’t you do the calculations?

Ai> what would you like me to calculate?

Eli> the amount of time we can stay here until the sea starts flooding into the bunker

Ai> okay, give me a bit

  
The sound of keyboard keys clacking away was accompanied by the droning of her supercomputer’s engine, and the occasional snore from Rina. “Okay, let’s see. Based on the current rate of sea-level rise and projected rates of sea-level rise as more and more glaciers melt, the sea level will rise by a maximum of twenty metres…”

“...Judging by the elevation of this town, you have…”

Ai widened her eyes in shock at the answer.

Ai> my calculator says that you have two months until the sea starts to flood into the bunker.

Eli> two months?

Eli> so, you’re saying that the sea will rise to a point where the drainage systems won’t be able to stop it, therefore causing the seawater to flood into the bunker

Eli> in two months?

Ai> …

Ai> that doesn’t sound quite right considering how high up you live. i mean, i’ve been there myself and i don’t believe it’s 2 months

Ai> let me just triple check to make sure i’m not doing anything wrong.

Kanan> that sounds bad…

Ai ran and reran her calculations again, even cross-checking the data that she had gathered for the calculation with other sources. However, the answer was always…

2 months.

The bunker Eli and Nozomi had would only be able to last for another 2 months before it would be flooded by the rising sea.

  
  


Ai> unfortunately…

Ai> the answer remains 2 months,

Ai> i’m not sure why there’s so little time.

Eli> i’m really sorry i didn’t see this coming

Kanan> don’t feel bad about it, eli :( anything bad can happen! it’s the apocalypse, right?

Eli> …

“T-two months?” a survivor of the second explosion gasped after noticing the conversation Eli was having with Ai, bread hanging out of her mouth. “Don’t choke, Honoka,” another survivor said, patting the former on the back.

“What is the meaning of this?” a girl with dark blue hair gravely muttered. “I… I…” Eli stuttered, staring at the digit 2 on the computer screen.

“Give me a minute, Umi,” Eli mumbled, rushing out of the computer room.

  
  


“Nozomi!” Eli cried.

Nozomi paused the video she was watching and emerged from her room, cocking her head upwards to ask Eli what she needed her for.

“The situation is bad. Who else is in here right now? We need to meet.”

  
**_༄_ **

Gathered around a large table, everyone in the underground bunker looked at Eli, who was standing arms akimbo at the head of the table.

“We have a dire situation. Based on Ai’s estimations and calculations, we only have two months left to live here before the rising sea starts to flood this place,” began Eli, to which the others responded with small gasps and murmurs.

“Here it is!” Nozomi announced, barging into the meeting room with a scroll of paper.

“This is the blueprint?” Eli quietly said to Nozomi, taking the paper from the latter. Nozomi nodded.

Eli spread the large paper out onto the table. “So… according to a blueprint of the bunker, this place has its own safety features and can withstand some amount of flooding.”

“But in this case, it’ll be a large body of water rising at a quick rate, right?” someone asked.

“Yes, Kotori,” Eli said. “When Nozomi and I first hired an architect to design this place we took many precautions. There’s actually another room deeper down into this bunker we can hide in, in the case of nuclear fallout. There’s also a generator that generates electricity by harnessing the heat from the core of the earth. We can set the thermostat to digits below zero and above a hundred degrees centigrade in case the temperature outside swings to any extreme, cold or hot. We really thought of everything… I’m not sure how something like this can catch us off guard. But for now, it doesn’t matter. We should focus on finding another place to live for the long-term.”

“Hm… long-term… But would it be too last-minute to build another location now?” Umi chimed in.

“We can see how it turns out. It’s the only option we have, other than migrating totally to another town or country.”

Everyone at the table sighed, unsure of what to say in reaction to the newly-revealed information.

**_༄_ **

Eli> we’re finding a new location to set up now.

Eli> we need to do this asap so that we can beat the rising sea level

Kanan> is it possible to build a new shelter in 2 months?

Ai> we can always try, plus rina and i will be helping!

Kanan> good luck! we’ll try to find some ideas from the internet.

  
  


Maki had just finished eating lunch and went to turn the computer on to check for updates. Reading the chat log, her jaw dropped.

“Another shelter…”

Meanwhile, Kanan was digging through the Apocalypse Rock manual for information on the rising sea levels. Her parents had included so much information about the conditions of the Earth and explained many possible scenarios that the manual was starting to seem more like an encyclopaedia. It was an inch thick, so there would surely be something her parents had written about rising sea levels.

“Let’s see…”

After a few minutes, the flipping stopped. Kanan stared at the manual in disbelief.

**_Apocalypse Rock: Farewell_ **

_ To unlock this feature, please contact us. [Only for Emergency Use] _

Kanan had reached the last page of the manual, and on it there was only that one sentence and a diagram beneath it.

The more Kanan stared at the diagram, the more confused she was. The diagram had an illustration of Apocalypse Rock and some satellites positioned on the land above them. The number twenty was written beside the undersea rock Kanan and Mari were residing in at that point in time.

A line shot through the middle of the rock, fired towards the satellite located near the place that Kanan and Mari had swum out to sea from. After that, the line extended out into the sky. There was a map of the solar system in the sky, and Earth was marked by a red dot. The line – which Kanan presumed to be the same line reaching out into the sky – reached the moon and bounced off. Then it hit Mars and bounced off.

After bouncing off a few planets, the line completely left the solar system.

**_༄_ **

Clad in a special suit, the fire chief stepped into the fire station.

“Hello?” she called out into the empty front room.

Hearing someone’s voice, the firefighters stepped out of the lounge. They bowed and issued a greeting to her.

“Don’t be so formal!” the fire chief waved, taking her heatproof suit off. “You can call me by my first name. I don’t want our first meeting to be this serious.”

“We would like to show our respect,” Rin smiled. “What would you like to discuss with us?”

“Have you all heard of the recent news?” the fire chief started.

“Are you talking about sea level?”   


The fire chief nodded. She surely looked different in-person. The trio had only previously met her a few times at the annual countrywide Online Fire Department Conference.

“Well… I spoke to the President.”

Rin, Hanayo and Maki gawked. What was happening?

“This is an official grant,” the fire chief continued. “I mean, it’s obviously up to you all. If you all don’t want to, it’s okay. There’s always Plan B…”

“What do you mean?” Maki wondered out loud, unable to contain her curiosity.

“Plan B… would be for you to migrate to another town to avoid the rising sea. By this time next year, where we’re standing now would be covered in 2 metres of water. So it’s best we relocate.”

“What’s Plan A?”

“...”

Without saying anything, the fire chief brandished a piece of paper from her pocket, handing it over to the three firefighters to read.

**_Plan A: Project Astral_ **

_ Two major events have impacted the town: first being the nuclear fallout, which has sent the world into a higher state of emergency than during Global Warming, and second being the artillery warehouse explosion, causing widespread damage but only on a local scale. _

_ However, the impact of the first is also spreading to your shore. Seeing that some people would be affected by the consequences of the rising sea level, I, the president of this country, together with Ms Mifune, hereby give you and the affected residents of the town special permission to evacuate by state aircraft. _

At this point, the three girls looked up. “E-evacuate by state aircraft? To which country?” Rin stuttered, in shock that the president had directly addressed the town’s residents, including the trio themselves. Shioriko nodded. “Well… does the name of the project suggest anything?” she mysteriously said, smirking.

**_༄_ **

“Kanan?” Mari called, poking her head out of the shower. “Could you pass me a towel, please?”

“Kanan?” Mari called again after hearing nothing for a few seconds. Sighing, she walked out of the shower as fast as possible without slipping and retrieved a towel from the adjacent cupboard to dry herself. “Now there’s a puddle of water on the floor,” she softly grumbled, retrieving a mat to dry the floor.

After changing into some clothes, Mari surveyed the rooms of Apocalypse Rock. “Kanan? Kanan?” she continued. However, her words were not answered.

Going back to the sofa, Mari yawned.  _ That’s weird… nevermind, this place is quite huge. I’ll take a nap while waiting for Kanan to reappear from the depths of this place who knows the size of. _

However, Kanan was not quite far away from Mari.

  
When they had first moved into Apocalypse Rock a week ago, Kanan had spotted something unusual attached behind the water tank. It was a screen displaying some circles.  _ But were they circles? _ thought Kanan again after she had stared at the diagram on the last page of the manual for half an hour. Then, she finally remembered.

The circles on the display attached to the back of the water tank matched the circles on the diagram.

In fact, they were not just circles. They represented the planets of the solar system, as Kanan could infer after reading the last page of the manual.

“To unlock this feature, please contact us…” Kanan repeated, glancing at the manual once more. Considering that the manual was written by her parents before they departed from Earth, she drew the conclusion that her parents wanted her to contact them before she could unlock a certain mysterious feature.

Kanan looked at the diagram again, studying everything from the width of the circles to the angles of the lines. She tried to think over the loud noise of the water tank filtering the seawater. Out of the blue…

Kanan put her hand on the part of the diagram representing Apocalypse Rock. She counted to twenty in her head, and all of a sudden the display vibrated.

A message was then projected onto the display.

“Please provide your fingerprint for verification,” the text said.  _ I knew it… the twenty beside Apocalypse Rock meant I had to hold my finger down for twenty seconds. _

Just like with most of the other appliances in Apocalypse Rock, Kanan provided her fingerprint.

“Kanan! It’s been so long. You would like to contact us? Have you seen the last page of the manual?”

Kanan clicked yes to respond to the subsequent message.

“Could you please describe the emergency you are facing to us?”

Kanan typed out a brief fifty word summary of the events that had driven her and Mari to enter Apocalypse Rock. She then pressed the enter button.

“Your message is on its way out of the solar system.” The screen finished, producing the same map that Kanan had seen on the manual. This time, the line was being drawn in real-time. “I-is that my message?” Kanan was so struck with awe she could not help herself from gasping out loud.

  
  


“S-so you mean… we’re going to… find another planet?” Maki stammered, in utter disbelief at the sudden new situation presented in front of her.

“Everyone in this town… together. The journey might take decades, years or even a millennium. There’s an ultraviolet light farm on board to sustain a vegetarian food source, so you’ll definitely never run out of food,” Shioriko said. 

“But we can’t steer a spaceship…” Hanayo pouted. “How do we know where to go?”

“Don’t worry, everything is automated. The destination, the number of resources needed, it’s all undergoing inspection and finalisation right now as we speak. Seeing that an underground bunker is going to be flooded soon, we’re working as fast as we can.”

“Underground bunker? How did you know about it?” Maki gasped. “You’re talking about Nozomi and Eli’s, right?

“Mhm, and how do I know? Well, the fire department collects data of every structure in this town, doesn’t it? We know everyone who lives here and we know what kind of structure they live in. It helps with safety inspections, crisis management, lots of other technical stuff.”

Maki, Rin and Hanayo were rendered speechless. Noticing their bewildered faces, Shioriko continued. “We actually did some calculations, and we found out that 2 months is all Nozomi and Eli have before their bunker gets inundated.”

“2 months… 2 months,” Kanan gripped the water tank’s surface, intensely staring at the display. The message was going to reach the moon in five minutes. “Please… mom… dad… our town has 2 months before the last enclave of safety is a goner… please hurry…”

“2 months…” Eli stared at the computer screen blankly. “2… it’s impossible, right? There’s really no use trying.

“2…” Nozomi trailed off, staring at the blueprint of the bunker. “There’s no way this is real, right? How?”

  
  


Kanan’s parents were not as far away as she had expected.


	8. the post-apocalyptic (sometimes online) community

At the end of the day, all Shioriko could do was cross out the piece of paper detailing Plan B. After the nuclear fallout and a resulting rise in the atmospheric temperatures, the world’s population was thrown into a race to higher ground to avoid low-lying coastal areas that would soon be inundated. As soon as it was conceived, Plan B became an unfeasible solution that was out of the question.

Mass hysteria had driven many in Kanan and Mari’s sleepy seaside town to neighbouring countries further inland to get away from the rising sea level. In fact, people all over the world were migrating on a large scale. Countries were already starting to close their borders due to a high influx of people into them, and it quickly seemed that Shioriko would not be able to evacuate the town’s population to the neighbouring countries. The situation was changing so rapidly that they only had hours to get to another country before its borders shut down.

Seeing that even Eli and Nozomi’s bunker were going to be flooded, the only way left was up.

“We will have to gather everyone in this town to explain the situation and ask them if they are okay with it. Asking people to evacuate to space was really my last choice, but since Plan B has failed, this is our only choice left. A last resort,” Shioriko huffed in disappointment, sitting in her office. “If they really refuse to go to space, we can always request other countries to allow just a few more people to come through their gates, but that’s only if they really don’t want to go to space. There’s no telling if the countries will oblige, though.” She was talking to no one in particular.

Meanwhile, Eli and Nozomi received a memo from Maki to inform the remaining town residents who were not in the know about the worsening situation and the choice that they had – to leave Earth and travel to a distant planet in hopes of living a better life. And even if they did agree to go to space, how could they know that they would live long enough to step onto extraterrestrial land?

Maki> give us a while. we’re preparing pamphlets for people to read.

Nozomi> okay, we’ll talk to some people. is shioriko coming?

Maki> yes, she’s on her way from her office again. she had to speak to the president for a bit about the cancellation of plan b.

_ Ding dong, _ a sound reverberated from the water tank.

Kanan stood up and made her way to the display which indicated that her message had reached… an empty location of space? “Your message will be replied to soon,” the display read. Sighing, Kanan went back to the sofa to rest.  _ Are my parents really still alive? _

After Shioriko informed Maki, Hanayo and Rin of Plan A, they relayed the messages to the others in the post-apocalyptic online community, causing quite the buzz. “Rina! You finally get to live your dreams!” Ai exclaimed, tightly embracing her when she saw the news. “We’re going to space because our town is doomed!”

“That doesn’t sound like something to be excited about…” Rina thought.

**_༄_ **

“So… do you still want to try and find somewhere to build a new bunker?” Nozomi asked Eli. “I don’t think there is much hope left for that solution, seeing that the sea level is rising so quickly. If we want a bunker as good as this one but just on higher ground, it would take about a few years to complete, seeing that this bunker took 5 years to build,” Eli explained. “Building a radiation proof room alone takes a few months, so we won’t be able to finish before the sea level comes. Plus, I do think it would be better to evacuate to space. It’s 100% guaranteed that no sea level can come and flood us from there.”

“...okay then. Let’s go help Maki, shall we?”

Hanayo, Maki and Rin handed out pamphlets explaining the current situation to the town’s residents, and Ai also presented her supercomputer calculations (which she was extremely proud of) to the town’s residents. Nozomi and Eli would then ask if they would like to be added to the post-apocalyptic online community, and to their surprise everyone agreed to it. Shioriko was in tow, ready to provide extra options should the residents not want to take up Project Astral, the town’s last hope.

No one really disagreed with Project Astral, though. Even the most skeptical of residents knew that going to space was their last hope. It was either that or living under two metres of water.

Once everyone had confirmed that they were up for Project Astral, Shioriko notified the president, who then activated his task force of scientists around the world to start planning for this event. At that point of time, there were no habitable planets in the solar system, so they were scrambling to find the next best planet for the spacecraft to land on. Alternatively, the spacecraft could orbit around a certain planet, but it would have to keep switching between different planets to orbit around because the orbit path would not be stable. Their calculations showed that the spacecraft would be at risk of plunging into the planets’ atmospheres or be sent off orbit due to the strong gravitational forces. And there was still the question of how the spacecraft could restock on fuel.

On the topic of Project Astral and the impending doom of the town, here were already 8 people in the Post-Apocalyptic Online Community: Maki, who shared the computer with Rin and Hanayo; Ai, who shared the computer with Rina; Kanan, who shared her computer with Mari, and Eli, who shared her computer with Nozomi. Nico, Honoka, Kotori and Umi were in the chat by themselves and did not need to share the computer with Eli.

As Eli and Nozomi went along the rows of houses that lined the ever-intruding coast, they had added everyone else into the group chat. Eventually, there were 29 people. They had added everyone living in the town, including fire chief Shioriko who would be tagging along for the ride to space. Even Mari, Rina, Nozomi, Rin and Hanayo were in the chat personally, not needing to share a computer with the people they lived with any longer.

By the time dusk had fallen, Ai and Rina had also joined Nozomi, Eli and the firefighters in ushering the residents to the underground bunker. They would be residing there for the time being until Project Astral was finalised. Everyone lugged suitcases with clothes, small furniture and some food. The country’s spaceship was undergoing customisation to include rooms for all the town’s residents, so they would be able to bring small stuff like vases and pillows. Once all the town’s residents were finished with moving into the bunker, Ai and Rina went back to their own houses to move as well.

“How… how are we gonna fit this in?” Rina thought out loud as she stared at the gigantic supercomputer right smack in the centre of their living room. The sheer size of the computer only dawned on them when they had tried to lug it out of the house – of course, to no avail. Sighing, they both decided to message the group chat.

Ai> so um.. i was wondering if i could bring my supercomputer onto the spaceship.

Eli> does the spaceship even have wifi? what can a supercomputer do without a connection?

Shioriko> let me ask the team right now

Hanamaru> what’s a supercomputer?

Ai> a computer, but make it ten times more advanced

Hanamaru> :0

Umi> you have a supercomputer?

Ai> don’t ask me why.. i got it on the spur of the moment the second i realised the earth was gonna crumble to pieces

Setsuna> what can it do?

Ai> a lot of things! i’ll show you all in person!

Kanata> zzz… you can show me tomorrow, i’ll be off to sleep first >.<

Maki> hey, show us too! we haven’t been over to your place!

Ai> actually, i might need you all over right now

Rin> do we get a sneak preview of the computer before everyone else?

Ai> yeah, but because i need help to transport it …. i hope it’s not asking too much?

Hanayo> of course not! we’ll be over, just give us the address

Maki> wait, are you actually-

Rin> i’m not sure if i can manage ><

Honoka> i’ll help if you all need!   


You> leave it to me! i’ll help as well!

Ai> i’ll start disassembling it first, you all can take your time to come here

Ai> thank you so much for all the help !!!

Rina> rina would like to say thanks as well ^^

Shioriko> okay hello i am back

Shioriko> they’re gonna install wifi just for this

Ai> would it be too much trouble?

Shioriko> not really, since we might also need the wifi to communicate with other people on earth as well in case anything goes wrong

Shioriko> and i’m sure no one can use their phones in space without wifi, right?

Setsuna> i know it sounds selfish… but yes, i need wifi to watch my anime

Yohane> i also need to record livestreams orz

Hanamaru> what’s a wifi? what’s a wifi :0

Ruby> haha.. pardon her everyone!! shes my dumb friend who isn’t really good at technology…

Hanamaru> did you… just call me dumb? >:0

Ruby> i-i’m sorry… >< >< please forgive me!!!

Shioriko> got it, i’ll make sure to get the team to provide adequate bandwidth for all those things!

Ai> you don’t have to be so nice… we’re in an apocalypse!! i hope we aren’t overbearing!

Shioriko> this is nothing much! compared to all the other things we have in stall for the spaceship, installing wifi is not a big deal

Shioriko> plus, the president wanted everything to be as top tier as possible since he’s in charge of the whole project

Umi> that’s really considerate of him, please convey our thanks to him and the team!

Shioriko> of course :D

Shioriko> i’ll relay everything to the developers now, see you all

**_༄_ **

“How are we gonna put everything back?” Rina wondered out loud as she carefully pried wires out of the supercomputer and rolled them into bunches, tying them up with a string. “It’s okay… I largely have the installation instructions committed to memory,” Ai muttered. “I hope… Anyway, I still have the manual so we can refer to it in case we get stuck.”

Rina anxiously nodded. Assembling the supercomputer seemed harder than taking it apart, as with most other things. Ai went into the closet to search for her manual. “Um… it should be somewhere here!” she nervously laughed. “Haha… just give me another second…”

Ai searched frantically as Rina meticulously organised the supercomputer’s parts by category on the floor. After ten minutes, Ai emerged from the closet.

“I…” she began. “I seem to have… er, lost it!”

“Crap,” Rina mumbled. “D-don’t say that! Where did you learn that word from? It’s bad!” Ai stammered, rushing over to Rina’s side. “You say that a lot, don’t you? I may look innocent, but I can say a lot of bad things,” Rina said. “Anyway, I’m done with disassembling everything.”

“Thanks for your help!” Ai smiled. “I’ll just try to call the company for instructions on assembling this.”

Just then, a knock resounded from behind the door to Ai and Rina’s house. “We’re here!” a lively voice announced.

Ai opened the door to see a girl with maple-coloured hair. She had a small ponytail held together by a yellow scrunchie. “Honoka!” Ai gasped. “That was fast.”

Honoka, You and the others promptly picked up one component each from the disassembled computer, marveling at the new technology they had never seen before. “What’s this?” You gasped. “Is this a receiver?”

“Yeah,” Ai said. “It’s what receives radio signals from the surroundings! It also can send some of its own out.”

Everyone carefully made their way out of Rina’s house, trying their best not to drop any of the equipment. As Rina and Ai looked back at their emptied house, they both felt a slight pang of sadness in their hearts, but there was really no turning back now. They were going to space, and Rina would manage to fulfil her dream.

2 months.

“Wait!” Rina cried all of a sudden, rushing back into the house. “There’s something we still need to take.”

She hoisted the small UV box the wheat she had collected just before the immense heat flooded the atmosphere two weeks ago. Although it had only been two weeks since then, the apocalypse had turned it into the feeling of an eternity.

“Can this grow in space?” Rina asked.

Ai smiled, nodding. “The spaceship has a room for other plants as well, so this will fit in just right.”  _ Nothing will stand in the way of life when it comes to her. Not even when the world ends. _

**_༄_ **

_ Beep! Beep! Beep! _

“We’ve tried our best to distinguish and piece together the situation on Earth right now.”

“From our observations, it looks like you’ve got no other choice, so we will take the necessary steps forward for you and your town.”

Kanan felt her eyes tear up as she listened to her parents from the screen behind the tank. How was their message reaching her, 1 kilometre under the sea? Perhaps they had designed it to work like that, considering that they had built Apocalypse Rock so far down anyway.

“You all are… still alive?” she muttered through her sobs.

“We will have to unlock the final secret of this chamber. Please head down the descending staircase in your room by tapping the bedside table three times and answering some security questions. You can do it, Kanan. We’re rooting for you, and you’ve made it so far.”

Kanan was on the verge of a full-on breakdown, but she told herself to maintain her composure. She initially wanted to ask her parents if anyone else could enter Apocalypse Rock: the people trapped above, at the full mercy of the pure, raw energy of the sun and the chaotic, choppy rising sea. But now there was another issue – how she could meet up with the rest in space. Was it even possible for the spaceships to meet and join together? What would she do in space alone with Mari?

Would she get to see the Post Apocalyptic Online Community in real life?

Taking every word of her parents’ instructions to heed, she tapped three times on the bedside table and answered all the questions. They were all about her and her parents so that no one would be able to hack into the system and guess an answer. There was an optical sensor, even. After clearing the many tests and trials to confirm it was indeed Kanan trying to access the function, the system finally relented, and the descending staircase opened through the floor.

“We figured that it would be bad for Apocalypse Rock to be stagnant.”

Kanan held on to the grip poles on the sides of the staircase, descending so quickly that she had to stabilise herself to make sure she did not fall down.

“Kanan? Kanan?” a voice called from the top of the stairs. “Should I come down?” It was Mari. “Yeah!” Kanan shouted back, her loud voice reverberating throughout the small stairwell.

“We knew situations change quickly during an apocalypse, so we’ve included a lot of room for changes to be made. In case something happens to this already-very-safe bunker, we left the best resort to the last.”

At the foot, there was a large room that was mostly empty. But what striked Kanan the most was a small circle on the ceiling of the room, which seemed to be detachable. There were also pipes running along the walls of the room. Vents were located by all four corners, and a large display was at the front of the room.

Panting, Mari made it to the foot of the staircase not long after. Kanan was still paused at the entrance to the room, taking in everything the room had to offer, eyes glistening in awe. “Let’s go! Let’s see what that control panel is about,” Mari suggested.

The two of them slowly walked towards the display, soon noticing that there were some buttons on it that they could select, namely ‘Launch Farewell’, ‘Specifications’ and ‘Contact Us’. Beside the three buttons, there was also some garbled data. Graphs indicating energy levels, the oxygen composition of the atmosphere, the location of some satellites… everything was too technical for Kanan and Mari to understand.

Just then, the circle from the top of the ceiling started to move downwards with a huff. The pair watched in awe as they witnessed something come downwards majestically.

It was a space shuttle.

“Do not worry about the control panel. All will become clear in further explanation,” a booming voice echoed through the large room. “If you are ready to start a new life in space, please board the spaceship. If not, please tap ‘Cancel’ on the control panel now.”

“I think we should cancel for now. We need to tell the Post Apocalyptic Online Community about this,” Mari thought.

kanan> this is urgent.

kanan> my parents, whom i presumed dead for years after they invented this shelter 1km below the ocean, ended up sending me a radio transmission. i think they’re orbiting just outside of the solar system or something.

kanan> and… they activated another secret room

kanan> there is a spaceship in the depths of this chamber. and i think it is possible for us to meet one day.

nozomi> a spaceship…?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope the pacing of this update was alright! i wrote this at 4am so there might be a few issues haha
> 
> will beta read asap once i clear some of my work! thanks for reading <3
> 
> –admin ❄️


	9. hospital

Kanan> yes. it’s possible for me to go to space from where i live right now.

Nozomi> that’s quite interesting

Shioriko> we can possibly formulate a plan for you to convene with everyone here on the surface.

Eli> yeah! since you all are part of the post-apocalyptic online community!

Kanan> really? would it be convenient to take us along? is it possible?

Shioriko> of course. the team will make it happen too.

Shioriko> i will convey more instructions to them now..

Shioriko> but first, one question

Kanan> of course!

Shioriko> do you have a specifications list for the spaceship in your hideout?

Shioriko> or perhaps a blueprint would be good

Kanan> let me go get them real quick. i’ll send you a pdf!

Shioriko> that would be great. thank you.

Kanan pressed a few buttons on the display panel, selecting the ‘Blueprint’ option and saving the PDF file of the blueprint to her phone. She then sent the file to Shioriko, who, in turn, relayed it to the developers and requested for a docking site where Kanan and Mari could link up with the state aircraft.

Shioriko> update, the developers say it is possible for your spaceship to link to the state aircraft

Shioriko> i advise you both to start preparing for the trip soon. the state aircraft is planned to complete its preparations in 6 weeks. just a little time before the sea floods the bunker

Kanan> thank you so much!

Shioriko> does your spaceship allow remote access? we can help pilot your spaceship towards ours so that you both will just have to sit back and relax

Shioriko> even better, does it have an autopilot function?

Kanan> well… based on what the display here is telling me, there is an autopilot function, but not a remote access function. we just need to tell the spaceship where it is supposed to steer to.

Shioriko> okay then… we’ll also install a communication system on the state aircraft so it can sort of “talk” to your spaceship and allow for a smoother link!

Shioriko> are there any other notable features about your spaceship?

Kanan> no, i’m sure that this is all we need for the mission to be a success

Kanan> we don’t need much! we just want to be able to go to space with everyone hehe

Shioriko> the president and i would like to make your experience the best, so this is no big deal

Kanan> yeah.. but to be fair it would be okay if we just stayed down here. we didn’t mean to actually stumble upon this place (・・；)

Kanan> to be honest, we were just trying to find a solution for the bunker problem

Kanan> but then we came across this other emergency plan

Shioriko> it’d actually be safer for you two to come to space though, considering it’s just two of you down there. but on the state aircraft you both will have access to more resources and stuff. it’s much better

Kanan> you have a point

With that, the Post Apocalyptic Online Community had begun its long, tedious journey towards space, and Project Astral was officially launched.

The citizens of the sleepy seaside town had finished settling into their rooms in Nozomi and Eli’s bunker, and everyone was looking forward to having dinner at the late hour – the many events of the day that had taken place had passed a large amount of time, and before anyone knew it, it was already half past ten.

Since there was suddenly a huge influx of people into the bunker, Eli and Nozomi had to split the people up into a few groups, as there was a limited number of shower rooms and chairs at the dining table. Again, everyone unanimously agreed for the heroic firefighters to go first, seeing that they all had just saved the town from descending into a fiery grave.

Eli and Nozomi had their hands full in the kitchen, trying to cook enough food for everyone, and trying to cook fast enough. Seeing that they had to grow vegetables and fungi in a special chamber due to the unsuitable conditions of the outside world, the output of their labour would be unmatched of what they would be able to do in a natural environment. Their attempts to emulate decomposing logs were… not the best, but it still sufficed, just that the mushrooms would be growing at a slower rate. “Do we… have enough? Is there more?” Eli shouted over the bubbling of the boiling water in the pot on her stove. “I’m trying to find some!” Nozomi replied with the same volume, frantically turning the logs all around to make sure she did not miss any mushroom. “Ah, found one!”

By the time steaming hot mushroom soup had been served to everyone around the table, Nozomi and Eli had been reduced to fatigue. The amount of mushrooms that Nozomi managed to find just barely scraped through, and some people did not get as much soup as others due to the shortage of mushrooms. It was of some relief, though, when some volunteered to take less soup to save more for the hungry ones. “Is this really okay with you?” Nozomi asked in response to a determined Ruby. “Yes, I’m sure! Hanamaru and Hanayo need it more, anyway. They’re big eaters,” Ruby said. Nozomi chuckled, and nodded. “Fine, a little less soup for you then.” Honoka, Kasumi and Emma were also engrossed in their food, and they seemed a little let down when there was not enough for a second serving.

“Can… can you see us?” Rina carefully muttered, adjusting the camera onto the top of the computer. While the others were taking turns to savour Nozomi and Eli’s fresh-off-the-stove mushroom soup for dinner, Rina was trying to contact Kanan and Mari through a video call. She and Ai decided not to install their supercomputer again because it would take up too much space 

Mari was aggressively clicking on her mousepad, trying to receive a signal from the computer in the underground bunker. ‘mari can’t get a connection 😖 we’re too far away D:’, she typed into the chat. ‘aww… well i guess we can just message for now’, replied Rina.

Upon finishing the last drop of soup from her bowl, Shioriko was out of the bunker and on the way to her office to retrieve more supplies and food for space, and also for the immediate problem of a food shortage which was upon the bunker. She also had to initiate a plan to prepare everyone for the space journey – what little remaining time between the initiation of Project Astral and the spacecraft launch would have to be dedicated to conditioning their bodies to the environments of space, as well as safety procedures to be followed in multiple events of emergencies. Seeing that no one was trained to live in space yet, time was of the essence, and the training schedule would have to be strictly planned down to the hour every day.

Shioriko> i’ll be staying there for tonight to sort everything out

Shioriko> prepared to get busy, everyone

**_༄_ **

The next morning, everyone set off for training. On the president’s request, an aeroplane was flown in from a neighbouring country to allow everyone to experience the feeling of weightlessness. They learnt how to move around in 0 gravity environments and eat, drink, exercise, so on and so forth.

It was a little challenging at first, but with Ai’s encouragement and guidance, Rina managed to rotate upside down and glide around for a few seconds. “You’re doing great!” she clapped, and Rina bowed.

The rest of the day was spent exercising on the ground, since going to space would require everyone to be physically fit. Everyone ran laps 

This would be how everyone would train for the next few weeks in preparation for their space voyage. No one complained or refused; everyone was hyped up and prepared to face their future in space. After all, what choice did they have? Running, pushups, eating salads… everyone’s daily routines were drastically altered overnight, but everyone was complying with it and adapting well.

Well… almost everyone.

**3 weeks before takeoff**

“Rina… Rina!” Ai whispered, kneeling beside Rina’s bed. “We’re leaving for training now.”

“Mm…” Rina softly hummed. “I… I don’t feel good.”

“Huh?” Ai gently gasped. Pressing her hand against Rina’s forehead, her eyes widened with worry. Rina’s forehead was hot to the touch, and there were beads of sweat forming on the sides. “I think you have a fever.”

“I think the training is too much for me.”

Ai whipped her phone. Seeing that Shioriko was the “official” who was leading Project Astral and was also acting as the leader for the group for the execution of the project, everyone knew that they could turn to her in case they needed anything. Shioriko did say that she would attend to anything that cropped up to the best of her abilities too, and she added that Rin, Hanayo and Maki were prepared to provide reinforcements. As such, Ai punched in Shioriko’s number and pressed the call button.

“Hello, this is Shioriko. I’m on the way to the training centre with a few other people. What’s up?”

“Ai here. I think Rina’s sick. Do you have fever medicine?”

“Yes, I would be able to provide that. But I’ll come over to the bunker personally to check myself. I’m a little trained in this field.”

“Okay, that would be great. Thank you.”

In total, it took Shioriko ten minutes to detour from her route to the training centre to go to the hospital for a fever prescription, and it then took fifteen minutes to cycle to the bunker and visit an under-the-weather Rina.

“Yes… I do ascertain a fever. But I would need to take her to the hospital for a further checkup to make sure she is not suffering from any other complications. A lot of things could have caused this… seeing that our trip to space draws near it is of utmost importance we make sure everyone who boards the aircraft is healthy and can withstand the journey…” Shioriko rambled on, jotting down some things onto her notebook. “I-I’m sorry…” Rina mouthed with a guilty look on her face. “It’s alright! This is nothing compared to my usual work,” Shioriko smiled, patting Rina on the head and standing up.

“There’s an ambulance on the way…” she muttered, checking something on her phone. “Rina, can you walk? I’ll request a stretcher if you need.”

Rina tried her best to sit up and get out of bed with Ai’s assistance, but she barely made it to the door before she went limp. “I… I feel a little weak,” she whined. Her voice was flooding with desperation, eyes pleading. It was as if she was begging to go to space and fulfil her dream. She looked at Ai sadly, already aware of the possibility that she might have to forego the space trip and inconvenience everyone. They would have to find an alternate plan for her… beg another country to allow just one more person in… 

“It’s alright,” Shioriko reassured, breaking through Rina’s thoughts as Ai supported her arms. “I also think the training has been quite tough. Don’t worry, alright? We’ll help you feel better in no time.”

“Yeah! She is right,” Ai said. “Anyways, even if we don’t get to go to space, I’ll still be with you, okay?”

Rina slowly nodded, and the trio slowly made their way out of the bunker and onto the ambulance rushing to the scene to escort them to the hospital.

**_༄_ **

Even the doctors and nurses had abandoned the country when news of the sea level hit the sleepy town, deciding that they had to put their families first. After all, the town was already operating on half its usual liveliness after the two major explosions. And at the end of the day, the town did not even have one hundred citizens in total. Of course their families took precedence.

Ai covered Rina with the blanket from her room when they entered the hospital, and Shioriko was phoning the nearest hospital in the bordering country to send a doctor over since the remaining few doctors and nurses in the team working in the hospital had gone to another country. They did not quit like the majority of the other medical staff, but instead “stationed” themselves at higher ground like most of the world’s population, and still claimed that they would willingly come back in the event that they were needed. However, Shioriko did not know how far away they could have been. All she could do was hope that the nearest available doctor or nurse would be able to help Rina.

Just as she was about to put the phone down, a small miracle occured, and the doctor on the other end of the line agreed to come to the sleepy seaside town to treat Rina. He would be coming by helicopter, and there would be three surgeons with him in the event that Rina needed further treatment. The ride would take around fifty minutes.

“Just close your eyes and relax for a while, okay?” Ai comforted Rina, stroking her hair and patting her back as she laid her head on Ai’s lap and rested her feet on some chairs in the hospital.

When Rina opened her eyes again, she was in the doctor’s room. Ai had carried her there.

The doctor did some tests and measured Rina’s heartbeat, clacking away on the keyboard and printing out a summary of Rina’s condition.

“Based on our preliminary observations… it could be some kind of allergy or virus. Could you please tell me what she has consumed for the past few days and what her activities were?” the doctor said.

“Of course. She has been on a strict diet of 500 millilitres of juice per day, split into 250 millilitres at 8 a.m. in the morning and the same amount at 9 p.m. at night. For breakfast… 100 millilitres of soup, for lunch 50 grams of spinach, three baby tomatoes, 90 grams of meat…” Shioriko read off the dietary information on her phone. Together with the president, she had come up with a diet for everyone to prepare them for space travel. “... and finally, ten lunges before going to sleep at 10 p.m. sharp.

“I understand. This diet has been ongoing for…?”

“The past three weeks, and I have planned it to continue for the next three weeks until the space journey.”

“I see. Can I confirm that she has not suffered any of the current symptoms at any point in time since the start of this diet?”

Rina nodded.

“Alright. Then we can rule out that it is any problem with the food. If there was some kind of contamination, then surely other people would have been affected by the food as well.”

“That is not the case.”

“Okay, understood. Then, I believe that it is not an issue with the food, but rather with her environment.” The doctor paused, turning to Rina before continuing. “You know her well, right? Does she have any sort of allergies or physical conditions? I understand that she resides in an underground bunker, right? Is there proper ventilation? Or could it be an issue with the sanitation?”

“I’ve known her for three years, and she’s not the athletic type, but she’s been doing fine with the exercises for the past few weeks. I doubt she has any allergies or physical conditions… I mean, we’ve never really checked before but I don’t think she has any.”

“Well… we can’t be too safe, right? I say we do a check on that before the space programme to make sure she’s alright for it. I just need to do some tests real quick, and I’ll let you know the results by the end of the day.”

“Thank you. I’ll get going for now. I’ll speak to the president about this to see what we can do in the event that Rina is really unsuitable to go to space,”

“We need a guardian to be here for now, though. Will the both of you be going?”

“It would be best for Ai to come with me, seeing that she lives together with Rina. In the event that Rina needs to be migrated to another country rather than go to space we will need Ai’s details too so that we can have a smooth transition.”

“Well…” Shioriko thought for a minute. “Okay, I’ll get Nozomi and Eli here.”

“Alright. I’ll proceed with the allergy and health tests.”

When Shioriko dialled for Nozomi, the call did not go through. Although she felt like Rina would feel safer with both of them around, she sighed, thinking that she would have to make do with just Eli.

“Alright, I’ll be over in a jiffy,” Eli said on the other end of the line.

Eli swapped places with Shioriko and Ai, and the latter two were on their way to the presidential headquarters to create a backup plan for Rina in the event that she would not be able to go to space.

The presidential headquarters were situated on a majestic hill; it was a wide building with a glass façade that reflected the beautiful sun and sky. The only difference from the reflection and reality was that the reflection was so peaceful, so undisturbed, but in reality, the sun was frying the ground and whoever might have been foolish enough to step foot outside without protective clothing. The president also requested for the foreign team of engineers and scientists to improve and configure the state aircraft in the presidential headquarters so that he could easily monitor the progress.

As Ai and Shioriko approached the building, Shioriko tried to call Nozomi one last time. This time, the call went through. “Hello, Shioriko?” her voice echoed from the other end of the line. “Yes?”

“I was wondering if you were free to come to the hospital for a little. Rina’s doing a checkup because she’s flaring up with a fever and we need to make sure she’s ready for the space programme.”

“Oh, o-of course! I’ll be on my way now.”

“Great, thank you! Rina is on the third level, in the doctor’s office. Eli’s there already.”

“Okay, got it.”

Ai and Shioriko stepped into the building, heaving sighs of relief when Nozomi agreed to be with Rina as well. Ai felt bad about leaving Rina behind, but she was doing it for Rina’s sake, in the event that she really could not manage to go to space.

“Huh?” Shioriko gasped, eyeing a girl rushing towards the revolving glass door from the distance. “Nozomi?”

Nozomi’s eyes widened and she slowed down in her gait when she realised it was Shioriko and Ai. “H-Hello? What brings you all here?”

“We’re here to speak with the president. It’s about Rina. How about you? I thought you were at training,” Shioriko laughed.

“Oh… I also was speaking to the president for a b-bit. About the trip to space.”

Shioriko nodded. “Alright, see you!” she said as Nozomi headed off to the hospital, and she and Ai made their way to the president’s office in hopes that Rina would get to fulfil her dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> long chapter update to make up for the update drought :D thanks for reading!!
> 
> [20 december] update — beta read! added punctuation and replaced some words :)


	10. mystery begets more mystery

The revolving door to the presidential building opened up to a wide lobby. Light flooded the interior due to the fact that all the walls were fully transparent, except the ceiling. There was a reception in the middle. It was a metre-and-a-half-tall (five feet if that’s your thing) wooden desk that was not stationed by any staff. A single flower rested in a white, porcelain vase in the middle of the desk, and it was a vibrant, middle shade of purple. It was noteworthy that the flower was still alive despite the fact that – apart from the people working on the spacecraft to the right – no one was inside the building.

“So… we’re headed to his office, right?” Ai said, and she clasped her mouth shut when she heard her voice echo all around the lobby. Shioriko chuckled. “Yeah, the lift in front of us brings us there. And don’t worry, that happened to me too when I came here for the first time.”

The lobby was mostly empty, save for a few seats dotted here and there. There was a small self-service kiosk where people could sit down and chit-chat or work on their laptops. A coffee machine was stationed, but stuck to it with tape was a large sign with the handwritten words “Out of Order” sprawled across in thick marker. Ai looked around in awe, despite the fact that there was nothing out of the ordinary to see. Even her place of residence had much more advanced, quirky and interesting technology to marvel about; it could have been the fact that she was desensitised to loud sounds and beeps and whizzes and did not know what a minimalist lifestyle felt like – just some chairs and a coffee machine. She was her own interior designer, and she decided to cram as many things into her home as she could. “After all, we’re paying for every inch of this place, so we gotta use up every inch of this place! Don’t you think so too, Rina?” Ai had once said to her friend when they first moved into their home. However, it could have also been the fact that the presidential building was the biggest building of any sort in the town, even taller than the fire station.

“Why is this place so huge?” Ai wondered out loud as the both of them ambled into the lift. “Like, for reals! There’s so much space, but there’s so little people. Yeah, I know everyone’s already fled to other countries and stuff but even if we go back to a more peaceful time before things started exploding left and right, this place would still be able to fit in the entire population of this town and then a few other towns from this country.”

“Well… I don’t have first hand knowledge of this myself,” Shioriko sighed as she pushed a floor button. The lift whirred to life, started beeping and the doors slowly closed. “I, too, think that this place is too big for this town’s residents. We don’t even top a hundred residents.”

“Aw, but still, a cool mystery–” Ai began, but Shioriko interrupted. “But…”

“But?” Ai pressed, eyes widening again at the prospect of new information. “I have second-hand knowledge. No, maybe third-hand knowledge. I’m not really sure, but this information is a family heirloom. I received it from my grandparents, but I doubt I will have children to continue the passing on to. So listen well now.”

Ai laughed nervously. “W-wow… am I allowed to tell anyone? Is this some sort of prophecy?”

Shioriko looked around cautiously, as if she was trying to make sure that no one else was in the lift, despite the fact that there was clearly just the both of them. “Is Rina good at keeping secrets?”

Ai nodded slowly, double-confirming her answer to make sure. The conversation suddenly took a solemn turn, and she felt like something deep, dark and groundbreaking was about to be revealed to her. Time stood still, the air grew stagnant, the lift no longer felt like it was moving, the world stopped spinning, her heart was about to beat out of her throat— “Then tell Rina, and only Rina, this. They all died,” Shioriko leaned in beside Ai’s ear and spoke so softly that Ai almost could not hear.

“They… died? Who? What?” Ai whispered as softly as she could, able to contain the volume of her voice, but not her bewilderment. She was violently spitting out mouthed words. “The heck? Who caused this? Are we in danger?”

“They… they perished one day. This town used to have lots of people. But one day they all perished. One hundred years ago. That’s why this building is now so empty. We don’t need a receptionist. No one comes here anymore. The government is mostly decimated. As of now, I think only the president and I know. But if you asked some of the other residents’ ancestors while they were around – perhaps try Kanan’s parents, if we intercept in space – they would surely know as well. Only a few people survived this incident. Now, the town is a barren skeleton.”

“Who is responsible for this? How can one person destroy the government?”

“I’m not that sure either. A lot of the events on that fateful day destroyed information links. Witnesses who told the police information about the culprit were never seen again once they stepped out of the police station. Even the police themselves succumbed to the tragedy. The correctness and accuracy The only remaining people here who might know about this are the firefighters, the last fragment of the civil defence force. Rin, Hanayo, Maki. I can’t bring myself to tell them in the event that they don't know yet.”

“W-why me, then?”

“I’m not sure if they’re ready to face the truth. I believe their grandparents were killed in the accident, and their parents were children who escaped unscathed. But I believe they too, died of the aftereffects. There were explosions, radiation poisoning, chemical attacks. All on the same day, Events kept happening one after another, and that’s why it was so hard for information to flow. People with information just kept getting killed. People who survived mistook someone for another and provided false claims of who they witnessed doing what in the midst of all the chaos. And even the survivors did not live long after. There’s no cure for cancer. Coupled with the fact that this event happened so long ago, it’s a whole big mystery.”

“This clearly is the work of a terrorist organisation, right? Either a really smart person orchestrated and automated the release of these harmful substances and the trigger of explosive devices, or a large syndicate worked together. I’d like to believe the second option more.”

“Yes, some witnesses say they saw a few people dressed the same way who committed these atrocities. They looked just like other civilians, but they had a certain consistent dress code. I think they did that so they would know who was working with them. They really had to dress like ordinary people to blend in, so spotting someone from the same organisation amongst a crowd of other people was like finding a needle in a haystack.”

Just then, the lift beeped again, and the doors gently parted to reveal an office that shone brightly. The lift entered directly into the office. It was just one room. A panoramic view of the town was available – the room had full length windows from the ceiling to the carpet. The president set in front of a large wooden desk with just a computer on it.

“We’ll continue this someday. I repeat, tell Rina and tell her not to tell anyone else,” Shioriko sternly whispered, before stepping out of the lift. “Mr President!” Shioriko beamed, making a 180° turn from her demeanour mere seconds ago. “I know you wanted me to be more formal, so I’m trying,” Shioriko said. The president smiled. “Your staff, as well?” Shioriko nodded. “I informed the three to be more casual with me when I told them about Project Astral. You mentioned that being casual is good for… apocalyptic environments?”

“Yes, yes. We’ve all already had our fight-or-flight responses triggered, so let’s try to relieve some stress this way. Anyways, what might you be here for?” the president asked.

Shioriko handed him some paperwork, and the trio sat down for some tea, biscuits and to discuss Rina’s future. At one point, Ai even brought out her phone to broadcast live updates to Rina, Nozomi and Eli, who were at the doctor’s office. “Technology!” she exclaimed upon seeing Rina’s face on the screen, and the president heartily laughed. The meeting went on for an hour, and a conclusion was reached with the doctor as well. Rina was not allergic to anything, and she was physically fit. The toxins in her body had disappeared before the scientists could trace its origin, and she had less of a fever already. Sighing with relief, Ai walked out of the revolving doors with Shioriko to rejoin the training everyone was undergoing. Rina was given one day to rest from the exercise, but she was still allowed to go to space and see the stars that she had longed for, for so long.

**_༄_ **

**5 days before liftoff**

The rest of the weeks flew by, and Rina naturally rejoined everyone else as well. Soon, the spacecraft was ready to take off, and Kanan was updating her parents about the situation.

‘We’re embarking on this journey in five days, and we hope everything goes well. Sending love from me and Mari,’ Kanan typed into the display at the back of the water tank. ‘Oh yeah, how do we use this thing again? I’ve informed the other people who are going to space from our town and the scientists building their ship to leave earth added compatibility so our rocket can latch onto their spaceship and we can reconvene,’ she added a moment afterwards before hitting the send button.

“Mari, it’s about time,” Kanan whispered, softly caressing Mari’s back to wake her from her sleep. “The trip is in two days, so I’ve sent out a message for my parents to arrange something for the rocket.”

Everyone at the underground bunker was packing their things and making final preparations to say goodbye to earth. Shioriko decided to cut down on the training for the last segment of the renovation of the state aircraft so that everyone could rest and wind down in preparation for the journey.

On the night of the third last day, Rina and Ai stopped by their desolate, empty house before the launch of the spaceship, and they said a final farewell to the place where they grew up together, made memories together and met Kanan and Mari (online) together. There was a certain feeling of bittersweetness when they realised they were actually going to leave earth for good and find somewhere better to live.

The spacecraft was being transported to the launch centre, and everyone was zipping up their suitcases with anticipation. They would be storing their things in a compartment, and only unpack them when they entered earth orbit before setting off in search of a habitable planet. Scientists on earth would be steering the ship and monitoring where it was going to see if there were any habitable planets in the solar system, and if there were any, they would then launch a mission to that planet to set up a camp for the residents there.

Rina looked at the palm of her hand again, and she gazed longingly at the keychain to the door in front of them. “Do we still need this?”

“Let’s keep it. It’s cute.”

  
  


**3 hours before liftoff**

Everyone had already settled their things on board the spaceship, and the final check began to make sure nothing was left behind in the bunker. Rina and Ai also double-checked their house to make sure there was nothing left. On the other hand, Kanan and Mari were receiving instructions from Kanan’s parents on operating the Apocalypse Rock spacecraft.

“We’ll automate everything. Since we can’t really control anything from here, we will ask the AI program in the rocket to sync its movements with the other departing spacecraft, and they will join together nicely if it detects that the other spacecraft’s measurements are okay and can be docked,” their transmission read. Kanan wanted to ask them what they meant by ‘here’, but she figured that it would be too last minute to send out another transmission to wherever her parents were.

Kanan> let us know when you all liftoff. we’ll board and lift off after everyone.

Shioriko> sure thing.

  
  


Nozomi deactivated the power system of the bunker once everyone made sure they had taken everything out and transported their belongings onto the spaceship already. She, Eli and Shioriko were the last ones out. With a pang of sadness in her heart, she lowered the shutter towards the entrance to the underground and bid the bunker she held so close to her heart farewell.

Once the six weeks that the state aircraft took to be refurbished passed, the sea was already starting to flood the residential areas of the coastal town, and some pathways were already submerged underneath the water. It was a sad sight, but it was surreal at the same time. To be thrust into a crisis so suddenly, then to see your hometown swept away before your eyes. It was such a rare, unique and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which made it feel kind of special. Nozomi and Eli admired the sunset as they stood on a sidewalk facing the sea (which was starting to reach their feet).

The residents made their way up an elevator and crossed a linkway into the state aircraft, finding their respective seats to sit down on. Since there were a few hours to kill, some refreshments were available in the corner for consumption.

“One, two, three…” Shioriko mumbled into a microphone to project her voice across the wide room. “Okay everyone, settle down and make yourselves comfortable. No one has left anything behind, right?” Everyone collectively shook their heads. “Great, then please feel free to enjoy some snacks before we take off. The toilet on this spaceship isn’t accessible at this point because it’s built upside down and can only be used when there’s no gravity. If anyone needs the toilet, it’ll be downstairs. I’ll get the president to come over now, so sit tight. Counting on you,” she finished, winking at Rin, Hanayo and Maki.

“You have our word,” Maki smiled. “We’ll do our best,” Hanayo reassured everyone, and a small applause rang out as Shioriko dashingly left the spacecraft and got on her buggy towards the president’s office.

The building seemed to be out of place – it was so brilliant and awesome in the daytime, but when dusk fell it was a looming, ominous shadowy figure that was almost menacing. This was further intensified by the fact that none of the lights were on in the building (well, this made sense due to the fact that only the president and the team of scientists were in the building at that point of time.

Not all of the lights in the lobby were on, and the scientists which had refurbished the spacecraft were packing their tools up at one corner of the lobby. Shioriko made her way to the central elevator as usual, the one in which she had divulged her secret to someone for the first time. Even then, she felt a little conflicted as to why she told Ai. Was it on the spur of the moment? Was it because she could not keep it in any longer? Was it because she… wanted to solve the mystery of the day the town was decimated? Perhaps time would tell all about that fateful event few lived to recount.

The room was pitch black when Shioriko exited the elevator. “President? Mr President?” she called out to the emptiness, groping around the walls for the light switch.

“Do you remember?” Mari started as she descended the stairs to the underground chamber encasing the spaceship. “Hm? What are you talking about?”

“When we were children, I told you about my dream. It was to become an astronaut and see the stars.”

“Oh yeah, that one.”

Shioriko managed to locate a button, and she switched the light on in the room.

“I promised you that I’d take you to space with me if I became an astronaut, and that time is here now.” Tears flickered in Mari’s eyes as she spoke. It was an emotional moment for the both of them, finally being able to accomplish what they set out to do so many years ago. It was also a look back on how close they used to be when they were just five years old, and showed them how strong their bonds lasted.

“Mr Presi–” Shioriko began, but stopped in shock. The curtains were blocking the window to cover up light from outside. The desk was laid out as usual, but in front of the computer was a note and a fountain pen that was presumably used to write it.

Kanan embraced Mari as she held back tears and sniffles. “Mari… I’ll follow you to the edge of space till my last breath.”

Shioriko dropped to her knees in shock, whipping her phone out to dial for someone. But for who? Her hands were stalled, her eyes were fixated on the sight, she was paralysed with confusion, fear and shock.

“Rin, Hanayo, Maki,” she slowly chanted, trying to calm herself down.

“Hello?” Rin picked her phone up. “P-please come now. Bring first aid. The president is dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is exactly 3000 words!! i think! wow how satisfying :D
> 
> i originally wrote more than this, but seeing that it's been a while since i last updated i decided to partition what i wrote into two chapters and publish this one first! the second one will come soon haha
> 
> merry christmas, and stay safe during this festive season! thanks for all the support :]
> 
> take care of yourself, and i love you °ʚ(*´꒳`*)ɞ°


	11. fingerprints

Rin’s eyes widened, and she whispered a soft “yes” before putting her phone down and explaining everything in a minute to Maki and Hanayo. The trio rushed out of the spaceship and down the elevator, rushing to the truck full of emergency supplies that were being loaded onto the spaceship. They grabbed a resuscitation device and a first aid kit, and rushed towards the presidential building.

Shioriko called the scientists next, who were on their way to the aeroplane back to their home country where they would be piloting the spaceship and monitoring planets from. “Will there be any changes which need to be made? The president won’t be able to make it for the trip.”

“Why?”

“Someone… shot him in the head. He’s dead. No pulse.”

“The trip should be able to go on as per usual. Just the room meant for the president will be empty. There still will be enough supplies and food for everyone, don’t worry. And I send condolences.”

“Thank you.”

Shioriko wanted to inform Nozomi and Eli about the situation, but she decided not to for the time being so that there would not be disarray and shock from the others. She merely told Nozomi and Eli to inform the rest that there would be a slight delay with the launch of the spaceship, but everything was still alright and would go as planned.

When Rin, Maki and Hanayo arrived, Shioriko ceased her CPR and allowed them to take over while she ran to the control centre of the presidential building to figure out who was responsible for assassinating the president. There was no one in the control centre, so it was all for Shioriko to look at.

First, she had to ascertain who was in the building at the time that the president was shot dead. From the footage of all the entrances and exits, it appeared that the only people inside the building during the event were the scientists and engineers working on the rocket, and the president himself. In fact, for the past few days they were the only people that had been inside the building. Seeing that the president was alone most of the time in his office, as Shioriko had come to know while working with him on Project Astral, it was highly possible that the scientists and engineers were behind the murder. But why would they want to kill the president? What would they gain from doing so? Did they want to hijack the project in any way?

The three firefighters, who were also trained in crime scene analysis, tried to locate any fingerprints that might have been left behind, including the note that the president left, the fountain pen that was used. Matching the fingerprints in the crime scene to those of the scientists would take a few hours, so they were prepared to work long into the night.

Shioriko wanted to question the engineers that worked on the spaceship, but there was no evidence that any of the engineers left their spots. The only places that they went to were the toilets for breaks, and the security footage in the president’s office also confirmed this. No one had entered the office before the curtains were drawn and the lights were shut off. However, it was suspicious to note that the president did not switch the lights off or close the blinds. All Shioriko saw before the lights were shut off were the blinds closing automatically, and the president turning behind him to see what had triggered the sudden movement. She was certain that the president did not do anything prior to his death.

Was it possible for the engineers to have been waiting outside his office to kill him? From the security footage, it seemed that a gunshot fatally wounded the president right after the lights were turned off, but at the time that the lights were cut off in the president’s office, all of the engineers and scientists were working at the side of the lobby. Plus, it would be impossible for someone to run up from the lobby to the president’s office within ten seconds. The elevator took fifteen seconds to slowly crawl up to the president’s office, and it was the only way in and out of the president’s office, so there was no way someone could have used the elevator to go to the president’s office to kill him since the sound of a gunshot happened really quickly after the lights were cut out.

Out of leads, Shioriko turned to her trusty three firefighters for their takes on the situation.

“We could not find the offending weapon,” Hanayo concernedly said. “Even if we suspect that it is a suicide, there is no way the president could have thrown the weapon away after using it.”

“It could be possible that he did not die instantly, but we’re still trying to ascertain if he did manage to stay alive long enough to throw the gun somewhere or something. We’ve combed all corners of this room, but still no gun. And with the amount of blood on the floor, we can say with almost 100% certainty that he died on the spot without a chance to get rid of the gun he used,” Maki added.

They even checked his clothes, his desk, his safe. There was no trace of a murder weapon being used by the president or anyone else, so the cause of death did not make sense.

Just to be extra certain, Shioriko called the engineers and scientists down and ran lie detector tests on their statements to make sure that they were telling the truth, and of course, they were. Since there was not enough conclusive evidence to accuse the scientists of murdering the president, she would have to go back further down the past. Apart from the scientists, who else was in the building up to the president’s death?   


She saw herself and Ai walking through the glass doors, Nozomi exiting the lift that day she went to speak with the president… there was nothing remarkable or out of the ordinary. In the presidential office, Nozomi simply handed some sheets of paper over to him and got his signature, before promptly leaving the room. Seeing that the daytime security footage was quite unremarkable, she would have to sweep through hours and hours of nighttime footage, which would take – understandably – hours and hours. How would the space programme continue like this?

Just then, Rin dashed into the monitor room to alert Shioriko to something.

“It looks like there’s something upstairs,” Rin panted, exhausted from running down from the presidential office.

Rin led Shioriko to another lift which served the various branches of governments’ offices, which were now defunct (considering the fact that the government was just Rin, Maki, Hanayo and Shioriko).

The corridor lights flickered on upon detecting the movement of people. Their footsteps reverberated down the empty hallway, kicking up dust everytime a sole hit the musty carpet. It had been years since anyone stepped foot into the forgotten corridors, even longer since the last janitor swept and vacuumed the floors.

“This room right here,” she said with a solemn, worried face. “It’s right above the president’s office, and has a vent connecting to it. I think it’s the only viable way for someone to shoot the president, because… if not from inside the office, then it must have been from here.”

Shioriko paused for a moment to evaluate what Rin said. She did have some truth in her words, and it was a viable theory. It would also be the only way the culprit could have done what they did, because the lift to the president’s office was illuminated. There would be no point in turning all the lights in the room off and closing the curtains to block out external light if there was going to be another light source coming from the lift.

Unfortunately, the upper floors that government branches used to occupy did not contain security cameras due to the lack of people passing by anymore. Therefore, there was no way for them to see who had come up to the government offices.

Upon entering the room, Rin and Shioriko noticed a moved vent. There were various weapons laid out on the table at the back of the room. Shioriko’s jaw dropped agape.

**_༄_ **

Rin wasted no time in gathering evidence and fingerprinting the surfaces, applying powder to the weapons laid out on the table and putting them into bags for fingerprint analysis. That would take about one day.

There was no doubt that it was a gunshot that killed the president, so why were there so many weapons on the table? Rin pondered for a while, before realising that some of them could have been decoys. The culprit probably wanted to cause as much trouble as they could by creating as many scenarios as possible.

This also suggested the possibility of a next move – a reason why the culprit wanted to delay time could have been so that they would have time to plan their next move, which would have possibly been in the spaceship. There was only going to be more suspicion and tension from now on, and Shioriko swore to protect everyone from whoever was orchestrating this whole plan as she packed the scene up and left with Rin to process the fingerprints.

Hanayo and Maki were trying to find a match for the handwriting, and Nozomi was also called down for questioning due to her appearance in the security footage.

“Haha… it was because I appeared in the security video, right? I get it, here’s my alibi,” Nozomi laughed, taking her phone out. “This is the contract I signed with the president. He wanted to see if I could contribute anything for the space programme, so I decided to pool in some money to the cost of renovating the spaceship.”

“...Then, I see. I’ll try to find another lead that can point to another person. Sorry to trouble you to come down here so late in the middle of the night.”

“It’s no biggie! Everyone else is asleep on the shuttle, by the way. Good luck with the investigation.”

Seeing that Nozomi, herself and Ai were not suspects based on the camera footage, then who could it have been? Someone who hid in the room for weeks to wait for the perfect opportunity. They must have wanted to frame the scientists or anyone else who walked into the building, so in order to calibrate their moves in time they must have striked just before the space programme to maximise the total number of people possible. The longer they waited, the more people would have walked in and out of the building, increasing the number of plausible suspects. But that would still beg the question of how they got out undetected. Through a window facing the back? No, that area is practically flooded with security cameras that saw 360° wide, so anyone trying to escape using that route would have been caught long ago. Alas, there had been no one on the security cameras at the back.

The more she looked into it, the less it made sense to her. Perhaps, it would be best to close the case for the time being to focus on the space programme? Half of her wanted to pause the investigation since there were very few possibilities, but half of her wanted to fight for justice for the president she faithfully served under for years.

Reading a photo of the note before it, too, was sent for fingerprint analysis, Shioriko only had question marks in my mind. The note was written from the point of view of the president, and it stated that he wanted to resign. He felt like too big of a burden to carry on the spaceship, and he wanted it to be his final legacy… none of that correlated with his previous statement, because he was really looking forward to journeying with his own citizens, the final remnants and survivors of a ruthless terror attack.

The more answers she tried to find, the more questions kept popping up, and it was like falling down a never-ending abyss with new information coming out in bits and pieces.

  
  


**Fingerprint analysis results released**

  
That night, Shioriko, Hanayo, Rin and Maki slept on makeshift beds in the lobby of the presidential office so that they could respond to any new developments as soon as possible. At all times, at least two people would be awake in case the murderer was still lurking in the building and planning on killing them in their sleep.

Two hours before the break of dawn, the fingerprint analysis results came back.

It was Shioriko’s fingerprints. They were all over the weapons and the fountain pen that had been used to write the note.

“What? I’ve never seen any of these weapons before. They’re… they’re not mine. I’ve never touched these with my bare hands,” Shioriko gasped as she stared at the bag containing the items sent for analysis.

“We believe you, Shioriko. You also have an alibi – based on the time of death we calculated from the state of the body and the camera footage, we can definitely conclude that you did not do it. You were busy helping everyone move their things to the space shuttle at that point of time,” Maki said. “So someone must have put gloves on, stolen your things and placed them at the crime scene to make it look like you committed the crime.”

“I’ve never seen or used these weapons before. Besides, I have no idea why someone would want to frame me for something like this.”

“Then… someone made a mould of your fingerprints?” Hanayo thought. “I mean, you’re pretty close to him since you help him with most of the town’s work now, and you’re in his office most of the time, so it’s natural that your fingerprints are all over the place.”

“So… the president tried to frame Shioriko for… his own suicide? He killed himself?” Rin exclaimed. “No way!”

“This doesn’t really make sense either… why would he kill himself or frame someone who hasn’t done anyone wrong?” Maki wondered out loud. “Someone… in this town… did something, that’s what I believe.”

“Someone… one of us? That someone is on the spaceship?” Shioriko said, and Maki nodded.

“That someone will be going to space with us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! thanks for reading! small life update: school starts in less than 7 days for me ><
> 
> i'm glad i did manage to write 20,000 words in this fanfic before 2021, though! it's the longest piece of fiction i've even written in my life, and it's the first time i surpassed the 10,000 word mark! i'm not sure how long this fanfic will be overall, so we'll see as i go along :)
> 
> have a cool last few days of 2020! i love you (o´▽`o)
> 
> p.s. thanks for 500 hits :D


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